nothing's out of reach (when you're with me)
by blenderfullasarcasm
Summary: Izuku hesitates. He's never been great with tears. Especially not ones coming from other people. ...Damn it. "I'll take the job," Izuku says, already regretting everything. (aka the my hero academia soulmate-slash-heist au/leverage fusion no one ever asked for)
1. you were a beautiful sound

**Notes:**

This is a Leverage fusion fic, but you don't need to know what that is to read this.

Also, this is a no quirks au as well as a soulmate au in which soulmates make eye contact and they hear music - a specific song, unique to their relationship

Thank you to all the lovely people from the Discord server who helped me get this thing finished! Especially you two, MaybeIfITalk and LittleMissHeartfillia

Note: some people in this au have slightly different appearances, since this is a no quirks au. I promise that this is intentional.

...

Izuku is sitting in a bar, because it's the only place open at this time of night - or maybe morning? It's hard to tell - and even if he'd rather be in a gym, it's not like an airport has one tucked away in a corner somewhere.

He's just come back to the US from visiting his mom in Japan. It had been an excruciatingly long twelve-hour flight, and he feels like he needs to _move _but, well, there isn't a gym. He would have to make do with squeezing his grip strengthener while he waits for the nice bartender to finish pouring him a half-pint of beer. He's ordered whatever was on tap, mostly because he doesn't really drink often - and when he does it's usually sake, which they don't have - but he doesn't want to be the guy who orders water at a mostly empty bar because that would mean no tip for the server, and he needs to remember that in America, servers' wages are mostly comprised of tips - which seems kind of backwards to him, but, well, he chalks it up to cultural differences.

The bartender is pretty quick, like the dyed-black lightning bolt in his hair suggests, so Izuku has a drink in his hand within moments. He sips at it idly with the elbow of his prosthetic arm on the bar countertop supporting his head as he stares at nothing in particular. That's when they approach him.

A somewhat portly man, likely in his early fifties, slides him a manila folder. He says, "please help me," while his companion stands just out of earshot but still close enough to be intimidating - which is a very specific distance that suggests he's most likely a bodyguard, even if he _does _have a few more piercings than stereotypical. Well, at least his employer doesn't discriminate based on looks. That's a point in Izuku's books.

The boss man doesn't _technically _say anything remotely like 'help me,' but he doesn't really have to when his body language is all but screaming a cry for help, and, well, Izuku's never really been able to resist a call for help.

Izuku doesn't touch the folder, but he levels his gaze at the man, taking him in.

He's wearing a grey suit, relatively high grade but not quite the highest (the probably-bodyguard's suit is just a few grades below that in all black), with a white button-down undershirt and no tie, like he had just slipped out of the office for lunch, despite the fact that it's probably about three in the morning. His shoes are black and shiny and look pretty uncomfortable, which speaks to some kind of dress code - his socks, on the other hand, are dark blue with a pattern that he can't quite make out without being obvious about it, which strikes Izuku as slightly odd but not overly so. That probably means he's upper-level management, high up enough that he can get away with minute dress code violations. The man's hair is mostly dark brown, fading to grey at the roots where his decent dye job is growing out. He's shaking, sweating nervously and wringing his hands.

Izuku, in contrast, is wearing a hoodie that says 'sweatshirt' on it in katakana, leggings, and his pretty much ubiquitous red sneakers - comfortable traveling clothes - and hasn't moved a muscle.

Strangely, this juxtaposition seems to intimidate the man, not put him at ease.

Their eyes meet, and the man's pale eyes flick downward habitually for a moment like he's disappointed but not surprised - resigned, perhaps - that he doesn't hear the music people gush about hearing when they find their soulmates. Every song is different, one that fits your relationship, and one that no one but you will ever hear. It's pretty obvious when it happens.

Izuku gives him a dry smile, knowing that pity would be unwelcome. The man is getting on in years, and he hasn't managed to stumble across his soulmate yet - every person he meets is a spark of hope, quickly extinguished - and no one wants to be pitied for something beyond their control.

Not that Izuku has any experience with that feeling, of course.

He's known who his soulmate is since he was six months old.

The man takes a deep breath like he's about to start speaking, then another. Three breaths later, he actually starts talking.

"Hello, Mr. Izuku, or is it Mr. Midoriya? Apologies, I always get Asian name orders mixed up - "

"You can call me Midoriya," Izuku puts in, because otherwise it just sounds weird. Not that his name doesn't sound weird in an American accent _period_, because, well, it does. But it's especially weird to hear his first name from a complete stranger, particularly one who hasn't even bothered to introduce himself yet.

The man blinks rapidly, like he isn't used to being interrupted. "Thank you, Mr. Midoriya. My name is Franklin, Franklin Petersen, and I've read all about you and your, um, your cases. The fake Fabergé egg in Poland, the, the, the Van Gogh you recovered in Egypt, even the letters from one of the Queens of England - why, you must have saved your insurance company, what, millions of dollars?"

"Billions," Izuku corrects softly, not without a hint of bitterness sneaking in. He takes another sip of his beer and finds that it isn't quite as good as he'd first thought. It's a little too dark - unfortunately.

Petersen hesitates, wringing his hands almost violently before saying, "And - well, everyone's heard - that is to say, concerning you former mentor - "

Izuku sets his glass decisively on the bar, picking up his grip strengthener again. The bodyguard takes a step towards them casually, pretending to be perusing the wine list, even though he doesn't exactly look like the kind of guy who likes wine.

"Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Petersen?" he asks pleasantly, because this conversation seems to be leading to something he _really _does not want to talk about.

Petersen gulps and starts nodding. "Yes, well, um, Mr. Midoriya, I was wondering - that is, what do you know about prosthetics?"

Izuku blinks because, well. It's kind of obvious.

Petersen follows his incredulous look to where his prosthetic hand is lying on the bar and flushes. "I - sorry, I meant d-_ design _, um, specifically. Prosthetics design."

Izuku shrugs gamely. "Well, I'm sure I could come up with something if you have a spare pen." He's pretty sure that's not what the guy is aiming for, though.

Sure enough, Petersen shakes his head violently, somehow managing to flush _and _blanche at the same time. Talented man. "No, no, you don't understand - someone's stolen my designs."

Izuku sighs. He knows where this is going, and he isn't particularly interested. Honestly, all he really wants to do is go back to his apartment in New York and collapse into his mattress, maybe take a shower to wash off all the airport grime he can feel sinking into his skin - not in that order, though, probably. "And I suppose you want me to find them. I'm sorry to break it to you, Mr. Petersen, but I no longer work in that area. I can refer you to my previous partner, if you'd like - "

"No," Petersen interrupts, the stumbling over his words suddenly absent and replaced with determination. "I know _exactly _where they are. I'd like to hire you to help me get them back."

Izuku eyes him warily, then his gaze - almost of its own accord - slides down to the folder between them. "...Who has the designs?"

Petersen winces. "My competitor. Rockwell."

"...You're absolutely certain?" Izuku blinks, surprised. Rockwell Prosthetics has an incredibly clean, family-friendly image. He knows as well as anyone that public images are usually hiding something...not necessarily _sinister _, per se, but perhaps...less savory. Rockwell, though - they seemed to be fairly straightforward. Very little in the way of scandal, except for that one time that the head of R&D started arguing with her husband over the phone on camera which the media had blown out of proportion - it was more like friendly bickering-slash-flirting than an actual argument, and it didn't really have anything to do with the company itself, anyway.

"Absolutely, completely." Petersen insists, leaning forward and pushing the folder towards Izuku. He's lost his stutter now that he hasn't been turned down immediately. "Open the folder, please, Mr. Midoriya, and you'll see - they've announced a project that's _exactly _the same as the one that I've been working on for the past _seven years_, just a week after one of my engineers disappeared with all of my files."

Izuku opens the file, probably against his better judgement.

Inside, there are sheets upon sheets of paper that prove what Petersen is claiming. Project reports, internal emails, meeting transcripts, even a few watermarked schematics from the early days of the project - no recent ones, though, which is understandable given the circumstances. At a quick glance, it seems legitimate. There's even a printed copy of an article about one of Petersen's top engineers taking a job at Rockwell Prosthetics last week.

He's still a little skeptical, though. Izuku doesn't exactly want to get back into the realm of investigating insurance claims, or anywhere remotely close to it, if he can help it. Sure, it's something he's good at, but, well, the whole thing's been tainted at this point by the company he'd been previously employed by. He's not particularly eager to return.

Petersen seems to realize where his thought process is heading, and just as Izuku opens his mouth to decline, he starts stuttering incoherently.

Izuku pauses and closes his mouth, allowing Petersen to get himself under control enough to wrangle his words into submission because, one, it's polite, and, two, he also has a tendency to stutter when he's nervous. He knows how it feels to get stuck on a word and be unable to get past it, especially when whatever he's trying to say is time sensitive and ugh. It's a terrible feeling, one that he knows intimately, and if he can make it a little easier for someone with a similar issue then of course he's going to do whatever he can.

Petersen pauses, takes a deep breath, then delivers his words in a cadence similar to the one Izuku uses when he's chosen his words so that he can skip the sounds he has trouble with. It's slower than his normal speaking voice, more articulate, and each word is pronounced precisely, but that doesn't mean it's at all lacking desperation. "P-please, Mr. Midoriya, please. I'm begging you - there's a meeting on, on Friday - this Friday, that is, um, it's a shareholder's meeting, and if I don't have _anything _to show for the past seven years, especially after I promised them something _revolutionary_, I'm going to be out of a job and I'll never be able to find work again- "

Izuku's fingers dance around the bottom of his glass, his expression disinterested. He feels for the guy, he really, really does, but it isn't like there's anything he can do for him unless he expects Izuku to somehow infiltrate one of the best secured facilities in the US (all by himself, no less) and ask politely for them to return the plans.

Yeah, Izuku's not going to be doing anything like _that _anytime soon.

Petersen sighs. "Look, Mr. Midoriya, if I don't get those plans back, I will be _dead _. Money isn't an object at this point - I'm that desperate. Could you - would you at least take a look at the team I've put together before you decide anything? Please."

Izuku shrugs, because why not? It's not like he has anywhere else to be, other than his bed, and that particular appointment can always be postponed if necessary. He does feel the need to point out a more logical solution though. "You do know that there are plenty of legal ways to get your plans back? Robbing your company's rival seems a little...much. Maybe a tad too risky?"

Unfortunately, Petersen's ignoring his halfhearted protests and is already slipping another file towards him from the messenger bag/briefcase hybrid the probably-bodyguard is holding - this one is grey instead of the typical beige. In it are three sheets of paper, all of which appear to be dossiers on people who surprise him, considering they mostly work alone and very rarely appear on the same continent all at once, much less the same city.

The first is Kirishima Eijirou, a hitter. Izuku's run into him a few times on jobs (by which he mostly means that he stopped Kirishima from stealing something that Izuku's former employer had insured), and he seems nice enough - for a thief, at least. He's open and friendly, and Izuku thinks that they probably could've been close friends if they weren't on opposite sides of the law. Even in his headshot on the dossier, he's smiling brightly and flashing a peace sign at the camera.

His hair is a distinctive bright red and spiked up almost obnoxiously, making him look like your typical punk-rocker, while his sharply-filed teeth betray his ferocity. Izuku knows for _certain _that he wears colored contacts, but he's not exactly sure what his original eye color is - not bright green, though, that's for certain. Izuku's kind of curious about their real color, but he pushes that aside.

Kirishima is definitely former military and almost certainly special ops. He can single-handedly take out at least four armed men in less than fifteen seconds, walking away with barely a scratch on him - Izuku's seen him do it. His preferred jobs are usually bodyguarding or retrieval, but he does occasionally branch out into assassination and what the mob calls 'enforcing,' not that anyone can prove it.

Izuku's even heard the testimonial of someone who claimed that they'd seen a bullet _bounce off _of Kirishima, that he'd kind of just looked down at where the entry wound should have been and shrugged, grinning with blood in his teeth as he charged at the woman who'd tried to kill him. But, obviously, that was impossible.

Izuku flips to the next page, feeling his eyebrows creep slowly higher without his consent as he reads.

The second dossier is on Tsuyu. No one's entirely sure if that's her first name or a code name, or maybe even something else entirely. She's a thief - a brilliant one with no discernible pattern. One week she goes after a jewel in Australia, the next a bank in Chile, then nothing for a couple weeks until she pops back up in Egypt for some sort of manuscript. She's a globe-hopper - it's almost as if she throws a dart at a map and finds her next target close to wherever it lands. The only thing connecting her targets is that they're all outrageously expensive and usually appear on the black market within approximately a month.

Izuku's caught her a couple times, but she's always managed to escape - just barely. He's pretty sure she has managed to climb up walls with no apparent handholds and possibly even hang from the ceiling to escape from guards or whatever security system was in place, though she had slipped him some kind of sleeping pill, so the memory's a bit fuzzy and it's entirely possible that that had been a hallucination. That's probably the closest anyone's ever come to actually catching her, really.

Somehow, Petersen's managed to find a picture of her, as well. It looks like it's from some kind of security footage, since it's in grey scale and so blurry that it takes a moment to recognize her. She's wearing goggles and her signature jumpsuit, sticking to the wall like a frog and scuttling along towards something off-camera. It's not a _great _picture, and it probably wouldn't hold up in a court of law, but the fact that Petersen managed to get a picture at all is impressive.

The third dossier makes his eyes fly wide open because _what._

It's...well, it's about the person who only goes by the screen name _sh0Ut0 _and is quite possibly the best hacker in the world. To the best of Izuku's knowledge, no one's ever actually seen him in person - only a blank screen and a not-particularly-distinctive avatar. It's the same stock profile picture that Skype uses, except one half of the silhouette is red and the other is blue. Izuku only has a guess at his gender, because he's heard his unaltered voice before. He's pretty sure he's unique in that. It's a lot more information than anyone in law enforcement has, anyway.

(The only thing Interpol has on file as evidence for him is a green sticky note folded into a crane with something written on it in some sort of code that they haven't been able to crack in five years.)

And the only reason Izuku's heard his unaltered voice is because his life had been in immediate danger and apparently _sh0Ut0_'s taken a liking to him? Or at least wants him alive for some reason.

A couple of years ago, _sh0Ut0 _had stolen some sort of sword Izuku's company had insured (he wasn't too clear on the details, and his company hadn't been particularly keen on providing him with a description beyond 'a mid-length stabby thing from the Crusades'), and Izuku had been tasked with recovering the item. He'd managed to trace _sh0Ut0 _(granted, after a number of false starts and wrong turns, but eventually he'd managed to find such a convoluted way of getting to his goal that he'd managed to trick _sh0Ut0's _computer into giving him a location) to what he'd _thought _had been an abandoned warehouse in Maine. _sh0Ut0 _had apparently thought it was abandoned too, given that he'd lured Izuku there with the location signal (which had turned out to be fake, of course - he doesn't know why he'd ever thought that he could outdo _sh0Ut0, _of all people, on a computer), but they'd both been very, very wrong.

_Somehow_, Izuku had managed to wander into some sort of drug deal between the Mexican cartel and the Irish mob. Their accents had been pretty easy to identify, even for someone whose first language wasn't English.

It had taken him a couple seconds to figure out what the hell was going on. Then, his bluetooth earpiece had crackled to life (despite the fact he was pretty sure that it had been out of battery when he'd entered the building).

"_Shit - get the hell out of there."_

Izuku hadn't recognized the voice, but he also hadn't needed to be told twice. Contrary to popular belief, he _did _in fact have some semblance of self preservation, even if it was basically vestigial at this point. It was enough for him to realize that a witness to a deal like that, involving multiple factions and a half dozen briefcases full of money, was as good as dead if they found out someone was there.

"_Damn it, that building was supposed to be empty - " _the voice from his earpiece had muttered, accompanied by the sound of someone typing rapidly on a keyboard. Izuku hadn't been paying all that much attention to it, though, because he had been a little busy absconding the hell out of there.

Izuku had managed to get himself just _barely _clear of the building when the entire warehouse had exploded, taking a good portion of the ones on either side of it as well. He, as any law-abiding citizen would, had immediately called emergency services. It took them about ten minutes to show up, and then he was stuck there giving his statement to the police for another two hours because he was the only one who had survived the blast and wasn't en route to a hospital in critical condition. He was pretty sure that the bomb had been set by a third party - probably the Chileans, from what he'd been able to pick up from the profanity-filled rantings of the criminals who'd managed to survive the blast as they'd been wheeled past him to the ambulance.

(When he'd returned to his hotel room later that night, the sword had been lying in the middle of his bed. There was no note or anything similar, but it was pretty clear who it was from. Izuku still wasn't sure what to feel about that.)

Anyway, his point is that _sh0Ut0 _has hacked into every major law enforcement agency in the world with little to no problem. He's allegedly siphoned billions, if not _trillions, _of dollars from major corporations. He's stolen physical objects without setting foot into the buildings where they're kept. He could have anything in the world if he typed a few lines of code.

So why the hell would he - would _any _of them - agree to this job?

Petersen's voice, anxious and increasingly strident, breaks him from his thoughts. "It's a good team, right? The best of the best?"

Izuku considers the question. Petersen's got a hitter, a hacker, and a thief, which should be plenty for a job like the one he's suggesting. Well, as far as Izuku knows - he hasn't seen the building blueprints or security setup yet, so obviously he can't say anything for certain yet.

He's a little surprised that Petersen didn't hire a grifter - but, then again, the best grifter would probably be Hagakure Tooru, and this doesn't seem like the type of thing she'd get out of bed for, no matter how much she'd been offered for the job. Petersen most likely put the word out that he was looking for her, she'd taken a glance at his proposition, then vanished. If she wasn't interested, she disappeared, and no one could ever find her when she didn't want to be found. It was almost as if she could turn herself invisible. No one could contact her when she didn't want to be contacted, and most of the time no one knew she was pulling a heist until it was over -

Izuku realizes he's muttering and clears his throat deliberately to stop himself. "It's an impressive team, to be sure, but...I'm not sure how to put this..."

Petersen gestures at him impatiently.

Izuku coughs. "It's just that...these people work alone. Always. No exceptions. There's absolutely no way that they'll work for you - "

"They will if I offer them five hundred thousand dollars each."

" - and even if they did, they're _thieves _. It's not like they're exactly...reliable."

"And that's why I need you," Petersen says, which makes the hairs on the back of Izuku's neck stand straight up. He's not entirely sure whether it's because those words in particular resonate with him or because they sound kind of ominous. Either way, it's giving him chills.

"I'm sorry. I don't follow," he says mildly.

Petersen's hands start trembling minutely where he's clasped them together in his lap. He clenches his fingers together so tightly that his muscles are twitching involuntarily. His eyes dart over to his bodyguard before he says, "I need an honest man to hold the team together. And I want - I'd like it very much to be you."

Izuku freezes in his seat. His heart stops for a solid thirty seconds. His walls slam down, wiping any semblance of emotion from his face and body language.

The pause is long enough that Petersen gets worried at the lack of response and starts rambling in an attempt to persuade him: "Of course, you'll be paid double what they get - one million dollars - " but Izuku can't hear him. He isn't listening. The sound is muffled through the roaring in his ears, so he couldn't hear what Petersen's saying even if he wanted to. Because.

_Because _.

They're almost exactly the same words that All Might had said to him ten years ago, when it had all started.

Similar to when it had all ended.

" - Look, it'll be completely off the books, no need to report it to the IRS if you don't want to. Please, Mr. Midoriya, I'm desperate. You have to be able to tell. If I don't have those plans, I'll be fired, and everyone in my division will be under review, on half-pay, and most of them really can't afford that in this economy. Especially not Charlie Sagan, my right-hand man - he and his wife just had triplets unexpectedly a few months ago. And S-Sally Reiner, her aunt's just been diagnosed with stage two breast cancer - " Petersen is still rambling. His persuasion skills could use some work.

Izuku is about to break in and refuse the offer when he hears something that just barely tips the balance:

" - and did I mention that - I must've mentioned it - those plans are insured by your old company, or maybe Rockwell itself is. I'm not too sure on the details, but I do know that if you do this your old insurance company will have to pay sixty million dollars on an intellectual property rights policy. Please, at least consider my offer - I am _begging _you - "

Izuku cuts the guy a break and considers it.

It's not like there aren't plenty of reasons to return stolen property, but adding in the opportunity to stick it to the company who as good as killed his mentor? Iida might have rubbed off on him a little more than he'd thought, because he's actually contemplating this for that reason alone.

It's a noble cause, he tries to convince himself, and it is. He's never really been all that great at refusing when someone asks him for help, anyway, but he realizes that it's also extremely petty of him.

...He can live with that. Can't he?

...Actually, no. He really, really couldn't live with himself if he stole something mainly just to stick it to his previous employers.

"Okay, Mr. Petersen," Izuku breaks in, fully intending to decline the offer. Petersen holds his breath, startled enough to inhale quickly. He looks so, so hopeful, eyes shining like he might actually cry if Izuku refuses.

Izuku hesitates. He's never been great with tears. Especially not ones coming from other people.

The silence stretches on, and Petersen's eyes dart towards his bodyguard as his lip starts to tremble violently. He looks like he's about to have a nervous breakdown.

...Damn it.

"I'll take the job," Izuku says, already regretting everything.

And that's how Izuku finds himself in an abandoned building across the street from Rockwell Prosthetics, planning a break-in to retrieve previously stolen property. Because he's a pushover sometimes and this is his life now, apparently.

The other three had met up on the roof of the target building because, understandably, they probably didn't want to be in the same room as the guy who'd been tasked with catching them for most of their careers.

Which is fair, although he's a little disappointed that he hasn't had the chance to find out what _sh0Ut0 _looks like - there are two figures on the roof, but they're too far away to make out any details.

Shoving down his burning curiosity, Izuku pulls the envelope he'd found slipped under the door to his hotel room earlier that morning (which was still pretty creepy, _sh0Ut0 _, just saying). He opens it carefully, because he wouldn't put it past any of them to booby-trap the envelope - not lethally, obviously, since they're all working the same job, but maybe with glitter or something equally petty.

Surprisingly, the only thing in the envelope is some sort of high-tech earbud, probably better than anything that's available on the market. It doesn't look like something of _sh0Ut0 _'s - Izuku knows that he likes to make his own equipment. To be fair, though, he hasn't actually seen one of his earbuds before, assuming he has any at all. Izuku puts it in his ear immediately, just in time to hear the tail-end of a conversation.

" - bone-conduction earpiece mic, bro," Kirishima is saying carefully, stumbling over the words slightly. "It works - actually, I dunno how it works, exactly, but it's something to do with the vibrations in your jaw. I got them from one of my old military buddies. Neat, huh?"

Well, that answers the question of where they came from, at least. Though he's still kind of confused as to why _sh0Ut0_, the tech guy to defeat all tech guys, hadn't made them.

"You can hear everything." That's - wow, that - that's _sh0Ut0 _'s unaltered voice. It's only Izuku's second time hearing it and - wow. "Interesting. You're not as useless as you look."

There's a barely discernible note of surprise in his voice, and Izuku is still not over the fact that he's _hearing sh0Ut0's_ _voice_ because he's been notoriously meticulous about things that might help someone identify him up until this point.

Kirishima laughs, and Izuku can see one of the figures reach out to clap the other on the shoulder. _sh0Ut0 _is apparently not having that, because he moves just slightly out of reach. Kirishima laughs again but doesn't make a big deal about it. "Dude, I don't even know what you _do _if you didn't make the earbuds."

"I work alone. Earbuds are unnecessary."

Which is true. To the best of Izuku's knowledge, _sh0Ut0 _tries to limit his contact with the general population as much as logistically possible. Working with a partner is out of character for him, so he wouldn't typically need an earbud. A headset, maybe, but an earbud would be redundant.

Kirishima laughs again. "Sure, man. Hey, Tsuyu, where'd you go? You need one, too."

Izuku blinks and suddenly there's a third figure on the roof, much shorter than the other two. Moments later, he can hear Tsuyu's croaky voice through his earbud, saying, "Thanks, Kirishima-chan."

Izuku coughs, just now realizing that he hasn't made any noise on the comms yet, so they probably haven't realized he can hear them. "That's everyone, then," Izuku says.

They're too professional to jump, but Izuku's pretty sure he can feel at least one of them glaring at him from across the street. He shivers, feeling the intensity, and suddenly he's really, unspeakably glad that looks can't actually kill.

He clears his throat. "Are we ready? Kirishima, _sh0Ut0 _, Tsuyu?"

He cringes a little because he just said '_sh0Ut0_' the way it sounds in his head and he doesn't know if _sh0Ut0 _himself pronounces it differently. When _sh0Ut0 _doesn't say anything to correct him, Izuku breathes a silent sigh of relief.

"Yes."

"Yes, Midoriya-chan."

"Yeah - wait, Tsuyu, dude, do you really think that can hold me?" Izuku can see Kirishima gesturing at - Tsuyu's rig, for some reason, which doesn't make any sense at all.

Tsuyu answers calmly - Izuku's pretty sure that it would take a category five hurricane to even ruffle her composure. "Kirishima-chan, the last time I used this rig, I carried one of the Terracotta Warriors out a skylight. Trust me, it would hold you, but you're not the one using it anyway."

Izuku makes a strangled noise. "Ts-tsuyu, the heist in Bangladesh three years ago - that was you?" He hadn't been working the case, but had heard about it in painstaking detail. They'd never figured out who had done it, so they'd eventually chalked it up to Hagakure. His partner - now ex-partner, since the whole All Might thing had pushed him into creating his own firm with a couple co-workers and Izuku out of the insurance business entirely - had not been pleased.

"It was, Midoriya-chan," Tsuyu confirms. "Also, Kirishima-chan, I would prefer that you not call me 'dude.' Call me Tsuyu."

Kirishima responds belatedly: "Oh, right, sorry, Tsuyu. Usually I'm the guy who has to rappel down the building, so you can understand why I was being cautious. I'm glad you're on the team, because I hate that part! It always feels like the cord is going to snap."

"Then you're not using the right equipment," Tsuyu says bluntly.

"I'd like to get done sometime tonight, if you don't mind," _sh0Ut0 _says passive-aggressively.

Izuku agrees, but _wow _that was a lot of salt. "On my count, please, and if you could all refrain from freelancing, that would be great."

Kirishima laughs again. "Relax, man! We know what we're doing."

"We're professionals," Tsuyu agrees.

_sh0Ut0 _doesn't say anything, but he somehow manages to project the impression of mild offense directly into Izuku's soul. Izuku shudders. It's an incredibly disconcerting feeling.

"Alright, then. Five...four...three - "

Tsuyu dives off the side of the building and Izuku kind of wants to cry, just a little. He sighs, because, well, what did he expect from a group of thieves used to working on their own? He adjusts his expectations accordingly.

"She's gone," _sh0Ut0 _reports, as if Izuku didn't see her rappel down the building.

Kirishima whistles. "Wow. She's five pounds of crazy in a ten pound bag," he says, voice full of admiration.

Izuku sighs again. He thinks this is probably when any other person would start wondering just what they'd gotten themselves into, except he'd known exactly what he was signing up for when he agreed to take the job, so he doesn't have any excuses. "Tsuyu, are you okay?"

"Perfectly fine, Midoriya-chan." Good. He hadn't really expected her to go _splat _on the pavement, but it was always a distinct possibility when one made a habit of jumping off buildings. "The vibration detectors are on."

"You'll have to use the cutting agent, then, but no actual cutting - "

"I have my own personal acid compound, Midoriya-chan. I know what to do."

"Yes, sorry, Tsuyu."

Across the street, Kirishima and _sh0Ut0 _heft their equipment bags over their shoulders and disappear into the building. Izuku's not entirely sure which is which - one figure is slightly taller and the second more broad. Neither of them are what he would expect of a hacker, since hackers - at least in his experience, which, granted, isn't all that extensive - are either stick-thin or really packing on the pounds, since hacking doesn't seem to leave much time for exercise or physical activity. But both the figures on the roof look like the kind of body type who could easily fit in with hitters - or at least the military. Which is...odd, but not really any of his business, is it.

"I'm in, _kero _." Ribbit? What? Why - "This man should really secure his pencils better." Um - okay?

"Tsuyu, you do realize that I don't have eyes in there. I have literally no idea what's happening if you don't tell me."

"Right. Sorry, Midoriya-chan. I'm in the maintenance room now." But how did she get past the motion sensors on the floor of the bigwig's office? Did she...stick to the ceiling or something? Izuku has _so many _questions.

"And we're on the elevator." Okay, apparently they were just going to ignore that. Fine. Okay. Whatever.

"That was fast," says Izuku, mostly managing to hide his surprise. According to the initial plan, Kirishima and _sh0Ut0 _were supposed to enter the building through a hatch on the roof that connected to the air vents and use those to make their way down into the elevator shaft. Their goal was to land on top of the elevator, if at all possible, and not dent it and/or die. Izuku _knew _they were professionals, had chased them all at one point or another, but he knew for a fact that Kirishima was weighed more than 90 kg and _sh0Ut0 _apparently couldn't be all that much lighter. It just seemed improbable that they could land almost silently on top of an elevator after a significant drop down the shaft it was occupying, but somehow they had managed it.

"You said to cross the green and blue wires, then strip the red one and hold it at the connection until it sparks, right, Todo-chan?"'

"Don't call me that, _Tsuyu_." _sh0Ut0 _'s voice was as disinterested as ever, but there was a distinctly frosty edge to his words. "You know I prefer _sh0Ut0 _. And yes, that should be correct. When it sparks, you're going to have to drop that connection and quickly attach it to the purple wire I gave you, then plug the other end of it into a computer."

Wow. That was, like, the third personal fact he'd learned about _sh0Ut0 _on this job, and the job had only lasted about five minutes so far. Was this why he worked alone? Because he had basically no filter?

….Understandable.

"Sorry,_ sh0Ut0 _-chan," Tsuyu says. She sounds contrite, but also exasperated, which is kind of a weird combination. There's also something about the way she's saying it that makes Izuku think...

...No.

No Way.

"Wait, is your real name Shouto? Like your screen name?" Izuku blurts, because he also has no filter.

There's a pause.

"...No." It sounds pretty monotonous, but since Izuku's listening closely and with baited breath for the answer, he can hear the faintest hint of embarrassment.

"At least three of his passports list it as his given name," says Tsuyu, because of course she's pick-pocketed all of them at some point or another.

While Izuku's having a minor mental breakdown because he's apparently been _calling sh0Ut0 by his given name the entire time they've known each other, _Kirishima laughs (because of course he laughs - does he ever do anything else?) and says, "Well, we _are _in America, aren't we? You may as well call me Eijirou, then!"

"...Izuku," Izuku manages to choke out, because he would _not _be able to handle being so familiar with three people if they weren't just as familiar with him. It's...mitigation. Or something.

"Right, so now that we're all on a first-name basis with each other, can we get the elevator moving? I _do _have other things to do tonight," Shouto says, bringing them all back into focus.

Izuku chokes on a laugh, mostly because he's very close to hyperventilating, but also because of all the salt Shouto is throwing around, like it's candy on Halloween.

And, actually - now that he's thinking about it, Shouto using his given name as his handle isn't a bad idea. Who would expect one of the most formidable hackers in the world to sign every job he did with his real name?

Izuku isn't sure that that had been Shouto's thought process, though. He doesn't really seem like the kind of person to put that much thought into a username.

"I have control of your elevator," Tsuyu croaks, breaking Izuku from his musings. "I can't help but feel like Shouto-chan would have been better at this part."

Izuku's face heats up, though he's trying not to picture it. With shoulders that broad, it would be almost impossible… "Somehow, I don't think Sh-Shouto is flexible enough to get in the same way that you did, Tsuyu." He shivers a little. Damn, who would have thought that an abandoned building would be cold in the autumn? He should've brought a jacket. Instead, he does a few jumping jacks to get his blood moving.

There's a pause on the line while Shouto considers the logistics. "...probably not, no. I'd almost definitely sprain something trying to maneuver my way through the hole in the window without setting off the motion sensors."

"Besides," Eijirou chimes in. "Don't you need to do some computer thing when we get to the basement?"

"And here I thought you didn't know my purpose," Shouto replies, drier than the desert.

"A-anyway," Izuku breaks in, because they _really _should get back to breaking into the building before the guards catch on. "Ts-Tsuyu, you have control of the cameras, too, right?"

"Yes, Izuku-chan."

"Then, if you're ready, would you get the other two down to the eighth floor?"

There's a pause, then - "Whoa!" Eijirou exclaims, presumably because the elevator beneath his feet suddenly started descending. The sound nearly masks Shouto's sharp intake of breath.

"Sorry, Eijirou-chan." Tsuyu doesn't actually sound apologetic, but Izuku guesses that it's the thought that counts? "I put the cameras facing the elevators on a loop, so anyone watching them won't be able to see us. As long as they stick to their patrol schedule, we should be fine."

Izuku groans internally. _Why. _Why did she have to say that. Now they're jinxed.

...He doesn't realize that he's saying this out loud until someone - probably Shouto, he thinks, but he can't be sure - huffs an almost silent laugh, which grinds his mutterings to a stuttering halt.

He pauses, giving himself a chance to collect his thoughts, then says, "Ts-Tsuyu, is there any chance you can patch me into the security cameras?"

"If Shouto-chan walks me through it, yes."

Shouto acquiesces and less than a minute later, Izuku can actually see what's happening inside of the building, instead of waiting for someone to narrate it to him. It's a significant load off of his shoulders and a definite improvement, because now he can take control of the operation like he's being paid to do. He's glad he brought his laptop with him to this old abandoned office building, and is trying not to think too hard about the fact that Shouto had apparently installed some sort of remote-control function into his laptop sometime in the past eighteen hours.

(Look, Izuku may be halfway decent at hacking, but that doesn't actually mean he understands most of what Shouto does, okay.)

"Okay, I've got them. Thanks, you two." There aren't any cameras inside the elevator shaft, so Izuku can only actually see Tsuyu right now - she's crouched over her laptop in the maintenance room, watching the elevator numbers tick down as she manipulates the wiring while simultaneously keeping an eye on the guards in the security booth.

The elevator doors open on the eighth floor and Eijirou and Shouto have to jump through them and roll to break the landing because Tsuyu doesn't actually stop the elevator. Izuku's pretty impressed that they both managed to stick the landing.

" - the hell was that, Tsuyu?" Shouto asks mildly, but the kind of mild that means imminent bodily harm if you answer wrong.

"What do you mean?" she replies, unaffected by the potential threat.

"You could've stopped the elevator so that we could get off it without potentially breaking something."

"Don't be a baby. You were fine. Besides, it's not fun that way."

Izuku can just barely hear Shouto's aggrieved and pointed sigh over the comms because suddenly he's more focused on the security room. It's a typical set up, possibly a little better than the average corporation's - multiple guards in a room full of computer monitors, some sitting, some standing, all watching the split-screen displays of camera feeds.

Except...

The guards inside seem...a little too focused on one screen in particular? It's not any of the ones that Tsuyu, Shouto, or Eijirou would show up on, since Izuku can see those on the wall to the right of the guards and the feeds are still on loop. So, whatever it is that's bugging him probably isn't actually a problem _right _this minute, but it _does _look like something he needs to keep an eye on, because it's...strange. It's something that's going to keep niggling at him until he can figure out why it's bothering him.

"Dude, you're really good at this!" Eijirou's voice derails Izuku's train of thought, unfortunately before he can follow it to its conclusion. He glances at the part of his screen that's displaying the footage from the security camera facing the server room. Shouto and Eijirou have made their way to the door and they're working on unlocking it.

Petersen had somehow managed to get them the blueprints from the building, security plans, guard schedules, and even a suggestion for the loose outline of a plan to get them to the apparently revolutionary prosthetics innovations (Izuku kind of wants to take a look at those), but hadn't been able to get them passwords or anything like that. So that means that Shouto has to hook up some fancy device that he'd built at some point or another to a very heavily secured door to even see what the actual measures protecting the door are. It's pretty finicky work, and _this _is why _sh0Ut0 _is with Eijirou and not in Tsuyu's place controlling the camera feeds and motion sensors.

Shouto doesn't deign Eijirou with a reply, instead stating blandly, "There's a ten digit password here, which will take maybe...five to ten minutes to crack, but that's just about the only thing of note. There's the motion sensors on the floor, of course, on a different system than the rest of the building, which is why we couldn't just drill through the floor. I'm slightly disappointed."

Izuku's pretty sure that's the most Shouto's spoken in quite some time - his voice is a little hoarse by the end of it.

Eijirou cracks his knuckles. "There's still another hour and a half until the next patrol, right?"

Izuku's eyes dart back to the security booth and - _shit_. _That's _what was bothering him. One of the people sitting in front of the screens has shifted slightly, just enough for Izuku to see what's playing on the screen in front of them. It's a football game.

And it's halftime.

"Tsuyu," Izuku says, and he can actually _see_ the way the others stiffen when they register the way his tone has changed. "Are you hearing any chatter over the company's radios?"

There's a hesitant pause, then, "...no? Why?"

There are eight names on the duty roster for the night.

"There are only four people in the security booth."

They all react differently.

Shouto goes silent, focusing on the gadget Izuku had been a little too nervous to ask about.

Eijirou shrugs and starts stretching out his arms. "Guess it's time for me to earn my keep."

Tsuyu asks how, because she's squinting at her computer screen and apparently can't figure out the difference between the figures in the security booth. "How can you tell?"

Izuku's busy thinking up a plan, but he answers her distractedly: "Count the hair styles."

Tsuyu says something under her breath, her tone surprised, but Izuku doesn't quite catch it.

"What?" He shakes his head. "Nevermind, I found them - Eijirou, Shouto, they're on the seventh floor and approaching the stairs; they'll be right on top of you in two minutes. They must be doing their sweep during halftime so they don't miss the rest of the game."

"I need at least seven minutes to finish getting the password," Shouto says tersely.

"No problem, man! I've got it. Might need to use you as bait for a minute, though - sorry in advance," Eijirou replies brightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, then he - somehow disappears from the camera feed?

His voice still comes through the comms, not as loud as before. "You know, I've never really understood the appeal of football. Baseball, sure, I get that - it's practically our national pastime and Koushien's always great to watch, but football? No clue."

"In football, you can score on defense," Izuku mutters under his breath distractedly, not intending for his words to actually reach Kirishima.

Kirishima's "Huh. Really?" lets Izuku know that these comms are way better to any of the ones he's used before. He's not sure that's a good thing. He has a tendency to...ramble, mutter, whatever. He's been told that it's incredibly annoying.

Before he can apologize, though, the guards emerge from the stairwell and almost immediately spot Shouto standing in front of the server room looking incredibly suspicious in his black clothes, sweatshirt hood drawn up over his head to hide his face.

Shouto takes advantage of their shock and uses it as an opportunity to wave and blandly say, "Hey." You know, instead of doing anything actually _useful._

Because of course he does.

This, rather understandably, causes the guards to pause for a moment just so they can radiate disbelief that this is a thing that is actually happening in their lives, which allows Eijirou to ambush them from behind. Shouto, apparently, is a great distraction.

Izuku really hopes that Eijirou doesn't find his soulmate in the middle of this fight - that would be pretty awkward.

Wait. Is that the reason that he wears colored contacts on jobs?

Soulmate bonds have been, understandably, widely researched - because, well, as technology improves, there's more to research. For example: Skype.

When Skype - or video chatting, more generally - first became popularized, people thought that it would be a great way to meet soulmates. There had been this whole craze about logging on to speed-dating sites that matched each user to another one and then turned on their webcams in an attempt to find soulmates. It didn't work - not that anyone really expected them to, of course, because the sites were very hastily coded and just matched users randomly regardless of culture, language, etc. But those sites didn't work for _anyone _, which prompted research.

(As did the rising global suicide rates.)

Eventually, a group of grad students in Sweden found statistically significant results regarding soulmate bonds - the soulmates must be physically within eyesight, with little to no obstruction, for the music to play. They tested multiple sets of soulmates with various mediums between them, including computer screens, mirrored contacts, mirrored sunglasses, and frosted glass. All of them prohibited a bond from forming.

The paper's authors hypothesized that it was similar to looking at pictures; it had been well-documented by then that looking into the eyes of a picture of your soulmate would not make the music that marked them as _yours _play, building upon one of the more popular theories for how soulmates existed at all - that eyes are the windows to the soul, and when the eyes of soulmates meet, their souls sing out to each other and harmonize, creating the soulmate bond's song.

(Reportedly, most soulmate pairs from the experiment were emotionally distraught by the time testing was over, because looking in the eyes of the person you _know _is your soulmate and not hearing _your song _is - taxing, to say the least.)

Their research had been widely publicized very quickly, and it's still brought up in the news every so often when another study confirms or adds to their findings. So it's not unreasonable to think that Eijirou is, in fact, aware of this and deliberately wears colored contacts to prevent himself from finding his soulmate in the middle of a job - and Izuku should probably stop thinking about this before he starts mumbling again, huh.

The fight is over by the time Izuku tunes back in - it looks like it took Eijirou about thirty seconds to knock out or incapacitate all four guards. It looks like - probably two throat punches, a knock on the head, and a hit to the diaphragm followed by a choke hold, according to how the bodies fell. It's not a particularly elegant solution, but it works. None of the guards even had the chance to sound the alarm.

Which is good, for now, but that means that there's probably a limited amount of time until the alarm sounds anyway, since Petersen's dossier says that the guards do periodic check-ins throughout their patrols. Unfortunately, Tsuyu hadn't been recording their radio lines, so they don't know how long they have until the other guards notice something's wrong. They could probably add a few minutes by way of distraction re: the game, though.

"G-good job, Kiri - um, E-Eijirou." And of course his stutter returns the minute no one's in imminent danger. Of course. "Sh-Shouto, how's the lock coming?"

"I have seven of the ten digits. Give me another...ninety-seven seconds. Sixty-three for the passcode, thirty-four to take care of the motion sensors."

"Just enough time for me to truss up these four," Eijirou says brightly. He takes a handful of what look like zip ties from the pocket of his baggy black sweatpants and walks over to where the guards are lying unconscious on the ground. He strips them of their weapons and starts binding their wrists and ankles together.

Tsuyu's silent over the line, so Izuku assumes that she's likely listening in on the guards' radio channel. Izuku tries not to distract her by rambling, so he clamps his lips tightly closed and focuses on the footage of the security booth. The game's just starting up again, which means they'll probably be busy watching it rather than keeping an eye on the time. Good.

"Done," says Shouto almost exactly ninety-seven seconds later. That was...almost scarily accurate. He's somehow managed to get into the room and hook up his computer to the main server's monitor without triggering the motion sensors. "I have control of the motion sensors - they're not off, but they won't register anything," he adds, almost as if he can read Izuku's mind.

"Great! That means we can stick these guys in there while your thing is downloading," Eijirou replies as he grabs two of the guards by their belts and hefts one over each of his shoulders. Shouto gives the impression that he's rolling his eyes, despite his eyes not actually being visible under his hood, and copies Eijirou. He hoists the other two guards over his shoulders, displaying approximately the same amount of effort that Eijirou had, then drops them none-too-gently on the tile of the server room floor. He makes his way through the unconscious bodies back to his laptop, leaving Eijirou to rearrange them into slightly more comfortable positions, probably for lack of anything better to do. Shouto taps a few more keys rapidly, then the entire screen of his laptop flashes a different color - Izuku can't tell which, since the security cameras are in black and white.

"I have all the files, including the back-ups and the back-ups for the back-ups," Shouto says belatedly, as if just realizing that not everyone knows what his screen flashing means.

Good. Izuku breathes a mostly silent sigh of relief, because once this is over he can go back to his regular, much less stressful life. Even if he doesn't exactly know what he's going to do with himself now that he's quite firmly refused his old boss's pleas for his return. "Okay. Okay, great. And the virus?"

Shouto taps the enter key and immediately the monitor screen turns to the blue screen of death. Izuku's seen it enough on his own screen to wince in recognition, even without a color image. "They won't be able to get much of anything from the wreckage," he says, with a hint of what might be vindictiveness. Izuku decides not to read too far into it, just for the sake of his mental health.

Just as he thinks things are going fine, Tsuyu says, "Uh-oh."

Because of course she does.

Izuku bites down a screech, turning it into a short puff of air. "Tsuyu, what uh-oh," he asks - more as a statement then anything else - in a moment of obvious eloquence.

"The alarms on the roof have been reset. Plus the motion sensors on the top floors."

"Ah." That _would _qualify for an 'uh-oh.'

"How are we going to get out, then?" asks Eijirou, which is not at all what Izuku was expecting. These three are renowned for working alone, and over the course of one job they've decided that it's one for all? That's...strange. It hasn't even been twenty minutes yet. And it...kind of implies that they're perhaps not working alone by choice. Which is just a weird thought, okay, because Izuku's been preventing them from stealing or chasing after them to retrieve whatever they've stolen for the past _five years _and he's _never _noticed it before and - it's just bizarre.

Shouto doesn't say anything, which is implying _agreement _\- he would've spoken up otherwise.

Tsuyu says, "The motion sensors are only on the floor, so I can move around easily enough, but our original exit plan is a bust. Izuku-chan, you're the mastermind - any ideas?"

Izuku doesn't think twice about saying, curtly, "Head to the elevator and change into civilian clothing. Tsuyu, you too." His mind is in overdrive, flitting through the multitude of back up plans he'd come up with, because of course the original plan would fall through. His luck is just _that _great_. _It's times like this when his overpreparation is actually useful.

The others must notice the way his cadence changes, or that his stutter's gone, or maybe it's just because they don't have a better option that they decide to follow his plan even if they don't actually know what it is yet.

The doors close behind Eijirou and Shouto, and Izuku glances back at the security booth to grant them some semblance of privacy as they quickly change into casual suits - and, in Shouto's case, some sort of fancy hat with a wide brim. A few seconds later, the hatch at the top of the elevator opens and Tsuyu - who's somehow managed to change her clothes already - drops through it to land in the center of the car.

The elevator starts to move almost immediately, since Izuku's taken control of Tsuyu's laptop remotely via screen share.

"So, what now?"

And apparently Izuku is silent for a few seconds too long because they start debating the best escape route.

"What's the plan? Tokyo Drift? Bro, I've always wanted to do that one!"

"Where would we even get a lizard. Unless you managed to smuggle one into the building somehow, I prefer the Mad House."

"You would, bro, you would - but wouldn't you need colored lights?"

Shouto shrugs. "I can make do without."

"What about the watermelon, _kero_."

"Ah."

"How about the burn scam?" Tsuyu asks, with a significant look at Shouto, for some reason. Probably. She _probably _has a reason, but Izuku can't really see much detail through the shitty elevator security cam and Shouto's facing away from him anyway.

"No, no, that's not going to work - they're a _prosthetics _company," Izuku breaks in once he finally has a decent enough variation of one of his back-ups - Plan K, to be precise. "They've had plenty of sensitivity training and - you know what, please don't argue with me; just follow my directions. I promise I know what I'm talking about. I've caught most of you multiple times, so trust that I know what I'm doing and we should all get out of here safely."

"...Fine. But, Izuku-chan, we only have fifteen seconds before the doors open," Tsuyu says in warning.

"You'll only need two if you do the Atlanta Two-Step."

A beat. "Why didn't we think of that?" Shouto mutters under his breath, so faint that the comms only just barely manage to pick him up.

"I refuse to be the one who goes down just because I'm a woman," Tsuyu says bluntly.

Eijirou shrugs. "Okay." And he falls like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground with a _thump _that reverberates through the entire elevator.

"Help. He's fainted," Shouto says, as monotonously as possible. Because of course he does.

Izuku groans. "Shouto. Would you please take this seriously."

Shouto sighs heavily, like he's being asked to move a mountain without a lever.

Izuku watches the scene unfold through the security cameras in the lobby from where he's sitting in a nondescript car, idling in front of the Rockbell building. The elevator doors open and the three of them spill out, Shouto and Tsuyu appearing to struggle to support a limp Eijirou.

The guards at the front desk don't seem to have been notified about the break in yet, since they rush to help Shouto and Tsuyu with Eijirou's weight before their knees buckle and they accidentally drop him. Not that that would actually happen, because apparently Shouto is strong enough to deadlift two ex-marines and Tsuyu lifts her body weight (plus equipment) through air ducts for a living, so Eijirou probably isn't that much of a hassle.

They pretend to struggle anyway, so one of the guards tries to help out while the other asks worried questions. "What happened? Oh my God, is he dead? Are we liable for this?"

Shouto reassures them with, "Don't worry, I'm a paramedic, and I've called an ambulance; it'll be here soon."

(They're in the middle of the city - there's always at least one siren in earshot.)

The guard's just making it harder to carry Eijirou, so Tsuyu directs him to hold the door for them instead. He cooperates with what looks like a sigh of relief - Izuku doesn't blame him; Eijirou is heavy - while the second guard has to sprint back to the reception desk when the internal phone line starts ringing. She motions the first guard over as soon as they're through the first door, but he considerately presses the automatic button for the second set of doors before jogging back to hear what his colleague has to say.

As soon as they're out of the building, Eijirou immediately drops the act - Izuku wants to berate him, but this is the one and only job they'll do together and he'll probably have to go back to catching thieves after this - and they all sprint towards the car. Izuku shifts it into Drive as Eijirou almost rips the rear passenger door from its hinges in an effort to get it open quickly. He and Tsuyu pile into the back seats, while Shouto slips into the passenger seat with considerably less property damage.

Izuku drops his laptop into Shouto's lap, makes sure that the doors are all closed and that everyone has their seatbelts on before merging carefully back into traffic. He drives just below the speed limit, despite Eijirou and Tsuyu urging him to go faster - they're eager to get away from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible, which is understandable. However, it's entirely possible that the company doesn't actually know that there's been a break in yet; it's been less than ten minutes since Eijirou knocked the guards out, which means they probably haven't woken up yet. The guards in the security booth were paying more attention to the football game than they were their compatriots, so they probably wouldn't notice their absence until the next time-out or quarter change, if at all. But, then again, time is sort of nebulous during football games, from what Izuku's been told (read: ranted at about by his ex-girlfriend), so it's definitely good that they got out of there quickly.

Besides. If you have a dead body in the trunk of your car, you're going to drive the speed limit so you aren't pulled over.

This is also why the car that Izuku's driving is a nondescript rental, under a name that Shouto had emailed him (probably fake, not that some car rental place looking into it would know), and paid for with cash.

"So," Izuku says once he hits the highway and the others calm down a little (even Shouto, whose shoulders had been getting increasingly more tense in direct relation to how long Izuku was taking to abscond the hell out of there). "Who's up for some good Japanese food? There's a place about ten minutes away that my friend told me about - she says it actually tastes like stuff we could get at home. It's in the middle of a bunch of businesses and residential buildings, so Shouto should be able to piggyback off a decent signal."

There's silence in the car, but Izuku doesn't turn to look at their expressions because he's a good driver and there's a traffic light in a weird place coming up soon. Luckily, it's green - he doesn't have to worry about the cars in front of him slamming on the breaks unexpectedly. This intersection probably causes three or four accidents a week - they should really put up signs.

Then Shouto breaks the silence with a little huff of what's probably laughter. "Yeah, okay, why not," he says, kind of bemusedly.

"...I could eat," Eijirou agrees brightly.

"You can always eat," Tsuyu says bluntly, but she doesn't voice any objections, so Izuku takes the exit that will lead him to the restaurant Ochako had mentioned going to the last time she'd been in the US.

It's a small place, a couple of blocks away from the bustling main streets, and so Izuku manages to park right in front of the doors. He resists the urge to do a dorky little fist-pump at his luck being actually good for once.

There's no clear name on the outside, just a couple of kanji so artistically rendered that he can't actually read them - or maybe they're written backwards? It's hard to tell - which doesn't really seem like a point in favor of authentic Japanese food, unfortunately. But he trusts Ochako's word, so he turns off the car and gets out, gesturing for his passengers to do the same despite their skeptical expressions. It doesn't look very busy for eight at night, and that's probably for the best if they're going to be doing something questionably legal.

The inside of the restaurant somehow manages to look bigger than the storefront outside would suggest. The floors and walls are wooden, or at least covered with wood, and the only seating options are on the floor around the kotatsu. Izuku feels a smile creeping onto his face, and it widens when a waitress greets them in Japanese and tells them to sit wherever they want.

Shouto immediately beelines for the table in the back corner, and the rest of them follow without complaint. Having got there first, Shouto chooses the seat that puts his back to the corner and gives him a good view of the rest of the restaurant, then starts setting up his laptop. Eijirou's eyebrow twitches like he wants to say something - that's the spot someone incredibly paranoid about their surroundings would take, and usually no one wants to fight him for it - but settles for sitting next to Shouto with his back against the side wall, which has the next best visibility. Izuku sits across from him, and Tsuyu across from Shouto. At some point when Izuku wasn't looking, Shouto had switched his blazer out for the sweatshirt again and has the hood pulled up over his head.

Shouto barely glances at the menu, apparently having decided he's in the mood for cold soba, which he announces to the table at large before opening his laptop and disappearing into a haze of coding. The others take a little longer to decide, making light conversation about their options and what might taste good even if it didn't end up being authentic. Eijirou ends up choosing some sort of spicy curry, since he claims that no one can get that wrong. At least, no more wrong than the English did. Izuku's not so sure about that, but he doesn't argue. Tsuyu decides on tempura, which seems like kind of an odd choice for someone who crawls through vents for a living, but that's none of his business. Izuku waffles between a couple of different options, but finally decides on katsudon.

Izuku ends up having to order for Shouto when the waitress comes back, because he's still lost to the world of coding, and, well, it's probably best not to pull him out of there if they can help it. He's the one responsible for actually getting the plans securely to Petersen, after all.

Six minutes exactly after the waitress collects their menus and assures them in Japanese that their meals will be out shortly, Shouto's fingers stop moving so fast it's hard to track them and he reclines against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Are you - " Eijirou starts to ask, but Shouto holds up a finger to silence him, still watching something intently on his screen.

Eijirou shuts his mouth, bemused. They all watch as Shouto holds that position until their food comes, for lack of anything better to do.

Just as their waitress appears from the kitchen, Shouto's mouth twitches into a slight grin. He packs up his computer set-up so quickly that by the time the waitress is ready to set down their food, the table is clear. She smiles pleasantly, and says she hopes they enjoy their food.

It's the moment of truth: authentic or not?

The others watch Izuku as he takes in the appearance of his katsudon warily. It..._ looks _right, so he's cautiously optimistic.

Izuku takes a bite and - _damn. _It's _really _good. It's almost like he's eating his mother's katsudon, actually. He digs in, and the rest of them relax a little as they do the same, making small noises of surprise at the taste. Because, well...it tastes like home.

He's _definitely _coming back to this restaurant. All hail Ochako for finding it. And telling him about it as an icebreaker after they broke up.

Somehow, they manage to eat half their food before it occurs to Tsuyu to inquire about the plans. "Shouto-chan, is it done?"

"Oh." Shouto stops slurping his soba for a moment to respond, though he doesn't seem particularly happy about it, sending long looks at his meal whenever it wasn't being ferried to his mouth. "Yes, it's been sent. It was a big file, so I had to piece together enough bandwidth from several signals, plus some extra security - even then, it still took a while to go through. But it's done now."

"Good," says Tsuyu, then goes back to her tempura.

They make some light conversation about the food - because it is _really _good - and try to avoid giving away too much about their respective backgrounds. It's kind of weird to have to watch what he's saying - Izuku's never really had to do that before. The others seem similarly off balance, though in their case it's more likely because they've never had the urge to chat about themselves. It's...odd, how quickly they've clicked together.

When the bills arrive, Izuku says, "This was fun. Let's never do it again."

He thinks he sees a flash of disappointment out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks up from signing his bill, they're all as stone-faced as usual.

"Yes, you're a terrible get-away driver," Shouto comments lightly.

Izuku shrugs. "Yes, well, I'm not usually a get-away driver."

"But you actually did have fun, didn't you," Tsuyu says bluntly.

Izuku winces internally, because while the heist had really been more anxiety-inducing than anything else, he _had _enjoyed himself and he really thought he was doing a good job at keeping that hidden. Because while what they'd just done wasn't _technically _illegal, it wasn't _really _all that legal either. It was the sort of grey area where he could convince himself that the law didn't really apply - after all, re-stealing stolen artifacts had been a big part of his job as an insurance investigator, and _that _hadn't been against the law.

(At least, no one had told him it was.)

Izuku keeps his mouth shut, since he doesn't want to incriminate himself.

Eijirou lets out a raucous laugh and leans over the table to slap Izuku on the shoulder companionably. "C'mon, dude, you have to admit that it feels good to be the white knight instead of the king this time!"

Izuku blinks. "I...don't think that means what you think it means."

Eijirou shrugs. "Maybe not, but you get the gist, right?"

"K-kind of?" Not really. Izuku is...pretty sure that he has the pieces flipped. He wonders if Eijirou has ever actually played chess before.

"Even so," Shouto cuts in, "this was a one-time thing, wasn't it." His voice goes up a tiny bit at the end, just hinting at a question.

Izuku's shoulders relax and he lets out a silent sigh of relief. He hadn't even noticed how tense he was getting until the tension was gone. "Yes," he says, more confidently.

That confidence leaves him rather abruptly when he realizes that since he's the one who drove them to the restaurant, they're going to be stuck in an uncomfortable silence for an extended period of time if he offers to drive them anywhere.

He does it anyway, because his mother raised him to be polite.

"D-does anyone need a ride somewhere?" he asks awkwardly.

Luckily, Eijirou takes pity on him. "Nah, I've got it from here! See you when I see you!" Then he disappears into the crowd somehow, despite being taller and a good 23% beefier than the majority of the incredibly sparse scattering of people that could only be charitably called a 'crowd.'

Tsuyu studies him intently for a moment, then says, "No, thank you, Izuku-chan." He blinks and during that time she somehow hops up onto the top of the building they'd just exited. There's no drainpipe or anything she could've used as a springboard. _How._

She waves at them from the top of the building, and then she's gone.

Which just leaves him and Shouto.

Staring at each other awkwardly.

At least, presumably - Izuku can't actually see enough of his face to definitively guess where he's looking, since his hood and the shadow it provides cover just about everything except his mouth. Which opens and says, "Your hotel is in the opposite direction of where I'm going."

Izuku stares at his mouth him a moment longer than he probably should have. "It's still creepy that you know that," he informs the hacker dazedly.

Shouto shrugs, then vanishes into the surrounding foot traffic in almost exactly the same way as Eijirou.

Izuku gets into his rental car, then leans back against the headrest with a long sigh and literally every cringey thing he's ever done that could be even _slightly _related to the awkwardness that had just happened runs through his head unwillingly. Which is just fantastic.

"Thanks, brain," he mutters under his breath, and then he starts the drive back to his hotel.

It's a shame he probably won't be seeing them again anytime soon, because, yeah. That had been kind of fun.

Not that he would ever admit it to them, of course.

...

**Notes:**

This is approximately 97% finished and *should* be updated weekly until it's done

(the chapters only get longer from here)

(also I apologize to all the people who read my detective conan fics for going on hiatus to finish this monster)


	2. in the echoes all around

46

**Notes:**

WARNING FOR THE TODOROKI FAMILY BACKSTORY

ALSO MENTIONS OF BEING 'BROKEN' IN THE CONTEXT OF BEING TRANS/ACE (but that's quickly shut down)

. . .

The next day, Izuku's at the gym when his phone rings, interrupting his workout. He's in the middle of benching an almost absurd amount of weight and he's two reps from finishing his set anyway, so he finishes it and wipes the sweat from his face with his towel. He really should have a spotter, Izuku thinks absently, but very few people can lift 375kg and also it's about six o'clock in the morning, so no one's really around anyway. He undoes the strap attaching his prosthetic hand to the bar and picks up his phone to check caller ID.

Izuku frowns. It's Petersen.

...What on earth could he want? The job's over. Petersen has the plans. The thieves have their money. Izuku has half a mind to block the number, but his mother's lessons in courtesy win him over.

He sighs and, with a growing suspicion that he's about to regret every choice he's made in the past twenty-four hours, answers the call. "Hello, Mr. Petersen."

"_Mr. Midoriya,"_ comes a terse, clearly panicking voice over the line._ "I - I didn't get the plans. I don't have the plans! And now - the meeting is in - ! When is it -"_

Izuku can just barely hear someone with a lower, scratchier voice say, _"Three hours."_

" _\- yes, three hours! If I don't - if I don't have the plans by then, I'll be - I'll be fired! My whole division will be fired - !"_

"Mr. Petersen," Izuku says calmly, completely at odds from what he's actually feeling because he's actually freaking out, just a little bit. "I watched _sh0Ut0 _send you the plans. Maybe you should check your servers again? It's possible that the email just got buried in your inbox or caught in your spam filter."

Possible, but unlikely, at least for the spam filter part. Izuku knows for a fact that Shouto can get around just about any spam filter in existence, mostly because of the one time Shouto had defrauded a couple billionaires with a Nigerian Prince-esque scam. Izuku had been the unfortunate soul charged with trying to get back that money (and estates, jewelry, art, etc).

(The things that rich people fell for, really.)

"_It's - It isn't __**there**__, Mr. Midoriya - ! I'm - I'm freezing the payments!"_

Izuku coughs, biting back amusement. He tries not to sound too insulting when he says, "You're going to tell a bunch of thieves that they aren't getting paid? _That's _your plan?"

"_Look, Mr. Midoriya, I hired you to keep these thieves in line! I didn't have to be able to trust __**them **__if I could trust __**you**__! So, please, can you - I don't know - "_

Izuku sighs, feeling bad for the poor man. "Yes, okay, I'll come over after I've had a shower and work something - "

"_Here? No! You've gotta be - No, you can't come __**here!**__"_

Which Izuku supposes is fair. Having a bunch of internationally renowned criminals meeting in your office? Probably not the best PR.

"_Look, I have a - a warehouse down by I-90, just outside the city. I'll message you the address - be there in an hour, and for god's sake, __**figure something out!**_"

With that, Petersen hangs up abruptly, leaving Izuku with a slight ringing in his ears, but he's kind of used to that sort of thing at this point. Petersen's not even the worst offender - at least he has a legitimate reason to be angry, unlike some of the more entitled patrons of the insurance company he'd previously worked for before he'd resigned due to "irreconcilable differences."

What a polite way to say _you killed All Might._

His phone screen blinks once, oddly, then locks. Izuku doesn't think too hard about it - he probably accidentally pressed the button or something; he does that a lot - and heads for the showers. He's been working out for maybe a little over an hour, so he's all sweaty and gross and he probably shouldn't go out in public like that. His soulmate would _actually_ kill him.

After a change of clothes, he gets into the rental that he hasn't returned yet - he should probably do that later tonight, after he's given the inside a thorough wipe-down and vacuuming - and drives towards the address Petersen had given him. He clips his Bluetooth headset to his ear, just in case Petersen decides to call him to change the location or something. The whims of rich people, Izuku swears.

He reaches the warehouse with about five minutes to spare, so he parks a block away between a used car dealership and a convenience store. Then he jogs to the building and - might as well, since he had to cut his morning workout short. Besides, he's a quick jogger - he opens the door to the warehouse with two minutes still left on the clock.

He's immediately greeted with the sight of Shouto being held at gunpoint by Tsuyu, which is not something he could say he was expecting. Tsuyu's never seemed particularly fond of guns, and Shouto doesn't really seem like the type of guy who'd let someone get the drop on him.

"What happened, _**sh0Ut0**_? Because I would like my money." Tsuyu nudges his ribs with the gun.

Shouto...doesn't look particularly bothered. He's got one of his hands supporting his laptop, the other typing away on the keyboard. "I'm looking now, but everything seems - "

The door on the other side bangs open, and Eijirou comes striding in. His smile is looking a bit more dangerous than yesterday, and his pointed teeth are purposely on display. "Hey, dudes, what's happening?"

Which...shouldn't really sound _threatening_ \- it sounds like something a frat boy would say - but somehow Eijirou sure does manage it.

"I'm looking," Shouto says, voice edged with a minute hint of frustration. "I'm - Tsuyu, could you _please_ move that. I know you know that I know it isn't even loaded, and it's impeding my typing speed."

Eijirou helpfully plucks the gun from Tsuyu's fingers, then proceeds to remove it from play by twisting the barrel until it's unusable and chucking it into the depths of the warehouse. What. The fuck. Izuku's pretty damn strong - he should be, after exercising whenever he could find the time - and he sure can't do that.

"I don't like guns," Eijirou comments cheerfully, blithely, like he's talking about the weather.

Yeah. Izuku kind of got that impression.

Shouto doesn't seem to notice the exchange, muttering an absent, "Thanks," and continuing to focus on his laptop screen. Suddenly, an odd look crosses his face. "Izuku."

Izuku jumps, not expecting Shouto to have realized he was there at all. "Y-yes?"

"Do you remember the time with the sword-thing in Maine."

Yes. Yes, he does.

"_Fuck." _Izuku says emphatically, because _of course_. He should've realized.

The only way to get them all together in the same room?

Tell them they're not getting paid.

"Get out, everybody out, _now!"_

Shouto's already shoving his laptop into his backpack, and the other two apparently trust them - or, at least, their reactions - enough to follow directions and sprint out of the building.

Which is good, because just as they make it past the door, the building explodes.

Izuku is thrown forward by the blast, barely bringing his arms up in enough time to shield his head, and tries to roll to break his fall. His momentum from the blast is more than he was expecting, so trying to roll just jars his shoulder in a way that probably isn't good for him. He lies on the ground, staring up at the sky and contemplating all the decisions that brought him to this point, his ears ringing from the blast.

Also, he's pretty sure he's got a concussion.

And probably some burns, too, except he can't really feel them right now because his vision is being swallowed up by darkness and - oh.

Izuku passes out.

.

.

.

Some nebulous amount of time later, he blinks his eyes open and tries to make them focus because he's clearly been moved. For one, the ceiling is white, not sky blue. Two, there's a _ceiling._

Izuku shifts slightly, trying to get a feel for his immediate environment. He's no longer lying on gravel, which is definitely a plus - it's softer than that, probably some sort of cot since there's also a thin blanket covering him up to his chest. Someone's wrapped bandages around his arm, which probably means…

Izuku suppresses a shudder. He's in a _hospital._

Izuku has not had good experiences in hospitals.

"...Izuku? Are you awake?"

Izuku contemplates pretending not to be, because he doesn't really want to deal with this situation if he can help it. But he recognizes that voice, so he should probably at least figure out who it belongs to - oh. Wait.

Right. The warehouse.

Izuku turns his neck, shifting his head so he can face the direction the voice came from. His eyes are..._mostly_ focusing now, which is good.

There's another bed in the room, with someone sitting on top of it, facing him. His left hand is handcuffed to the rails of the bed, for some reason. He's wearing all black, and Izuku doesn't recognize him.

Izuku blinks again, hard, and when he opens his eyes they actually cooperate and let him take in the details of the other man's face.

The first thing that draws his eyes is the guy's hair. It's white. Completely white. Bleached, probably, because he can't be more than thirty years old.

The second thing that catches his attention is the eyepatch covering the man's left eye. It's black, simple, and apparently medically necessary since the doctors didn't remove it. The left side of his face, underneath the eyepatch, is covered in what looks like a pretty nasty burn. It's old, though - probably not from the explosion.

(There's a weird buzzing sound in the back of Izuku's mind, but he ignored it, chalking it up to the concussion.)

"...Izuku?"

Oh.

_Oh_.

"...Sh-Shouto?"

The man - Shouto - nods once, sharply. He seems uncomfortable with Izuku's absent scrutiny, but he's hiding it well. Izuku pretends not to notice, but forces his gaze from Shouto's face (_sh0Ut0's face!_) and lets his eyes roam around the room.

He doesn't know what he's expecting. It's a standard hospital room, aside from the weird placement of the vent between the two beds. Oh, and the fact that he's _also _been handcuffed to the bed.

"What about the others? Are they here?" Izuku asks, because the last thing he remembers is being in a warehouse with Shouto, Tsuyu, and Eijirou. And then the warehouse exploding.

Which is _probably _why they're in a hospital, Izuku realizes rather belatedly.

Yeah, he's definitely got a concussion.

Shouto opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Tsuyu's voice comes through the vent and interrupts him: "It's about time you woke up."

"Yeah, man, we were worried!" Eijirou's voice chimes in.

Izuku's head is still spinning a little, but. That's. Fine. He guesses. "You're both in the room next door? Handcuffed to the bed?"

Eijirou laughs. "I know, right? You'd think they'd ask for my safe word first."

Izuku stifles a surprised snort because that was _not_ the direction he was expecting that to go.

"I'm not," says Tsuyu, not acknowledging Eijirou's comment at all. "Well. Not anymore."

Izuku feels like he should've expected that. She's a thief - of course she can get out of the handcuffs easily enough. Come to think of it, Eijirou probably could, too. Hell, Izuku thinks, remembering what he did to the gun, Eijirou could probably rip the cuffs in half if he tried hard enough.

But that hadn't been Izuku's point. He needs to keep his mind on track. Which is going to be more difficult than usual, thanks to his concussion.

Izuku's head throbs, apparently deciding that he needs another painful reminder. "Where are we, exactly? And how did we get here?"

"The explosion knocked us out and summoned the local cops," Shouto says quietly, in deference to Izuku's aching head, which is nice of him. "Understandably, they thought a bunch of injured people unconscious outside a warehouse seemed suspicious, so they brought us here and processed us." He holds up his hands, palms facing Izuku so he can see the inky pads of his fingers. "That was about...twenty minutes ago. Which means, depending on the software and how fast their connection is, we have about ten minutes before they come and arrest us."

Izuku's mind is working overtime, whirring away, processing the new information. He's still staring at Shouto's fingers.

Shouto hesitates before continuing. "They won't get much on me; my fingerprints are - they were burned off ages ago. I'm not sure about the others."

There's something..._off_ about the way he phrased that, but Izuku's too focused on coming up with an escape plan in spite of his scattered brain to devote too much brain power to it right this second.

It's okay.

Everything's going to be fine.

Just as soon as he comes up with -

"Okay," Izuku says, piecing together a semi-decent plan in his head, even though it's not like he really has much of an idea of the hospital's layout. "Does anyone still have a phone?"

"They searched us on the way in," Shouto points out, but Izuku rolls his eyes because _Tsuyu_.

Right on cue, Tsuyu's voice wafts through the vent: "I lifted one off the cop who handcuffed me. Why?"

"Because I have a plan to get us out of here. Will the phone fit through the vent?"

His answer comes a few seconds later in the form of the phone dropping through the vent. Luckily, Shouto's close enough to catch it with one hand before it hits the floor and breaks, shattering along with their escape plan. That would've been bad.

Then he looks at the phone and curses internally. It's a flip phone, which is not ideal for sending faxes, which is something his current plan kind of relies on.

"Hey, sorry," Izuku calls through the vent. "But is there any chance you can get your hands on a smartphone?

There's a considering pause, and then the sound of someone gagging and the acrid smell of vomit.

"Wow, that's pretty neat, dude! I didn't know you could do that on command!" Izuku hears a muffled Eijirou say, full of admiration before he presumably presses the nurse call button.

Izuku suppresses a shiver. He _hates_ the smell of vomit, especially in hospital rooms.

(At least it's not mixed with blood this time.)

Shouto notices. "You...don't like hospitals, do you," he states quietly, looking for all the world like he's more interested in the exchange happening on the other side of the wall than Izuku's answer.

"No," says Izuku distantly. "No, I do not." He shakes his head, trying to clear it, and pulls himself together as the concerned voices of nurses come through the vent.

The doctors conclude that Tsuyu's vomiting is just a symptom of a concussion, and nothing to worry about. They exit the room, unwittingly leaving behind a smartphone, which Tsuyu passes through the vent to Izuku.

He turns it over in his hands, eyeing it carefully. His original plan involved impersonating at least three people and hoping that whatever officer had picked them up wasn't high enough up the food chain to call them on it, plus possibly hacking into the FBI and the hospital mainframe. It was...probably a little too complex to pull off with one smartphone.

But, then again.

He _did_ have _sh0Ut0_ sitting right next to him.

Izuku's eyes dart around the room, as he tries to simplify his escape plan.

They land on the wall behind Shouto. More specifically, the window.

"You know what? Actually…" Izuku eyes the window. It's, what? Two square feet? "Why didn't I think of this earlier."

"The concussion, most likely," Shouto supplies, looking at him curiously. He doesn't seem to have any clue about what, exactly, Izuku's plan consists of, since his expression is mostly blank - just polite curiosity, instead of _are you seriously thinking about hurling yourself out the window._

"Yeah, okay. Sure," Izuku says distractedly, before spiraling into a mumbling ramble as he tries to figure out whether his plan is actually feasible. "Okay, so the window's big enough that even Eijirou could manage to get through if he tried hard enough. Plus, we aren't facing the parking lot - what is that, a forest? I didn't know they still had forests in the city; that's weird, but whatever, I guess, okay. And judging from the angle of perspective we're on, what, the second floor? Pssh, that's easy - the fall wouldn't even break any bones, even if we didn't have anything to turn into ropes; we can probably knot together some sheets if need be… Oh, and gloves! There's a box of disposable gloves over by the sink, good, we'll need those if we take the car - right, yeah, this should work."

Izuku takes a breath for the first time in probably about three minutes and turns to meet Shouto's grey eye, which is slightly wider than earlier.

(The insistent buzzing in the back of his mind returns, which is kind of annoying.)

Izuku grins widely. "I have a plan."

Shouto's shoulders relax, just a bit. "Are you going to tell me what it is," he asks dryly to hide his relief.

"In a minute," Izuku says, distracted again. He hums, examining the cuffs attaching his arm to the bed. Yeah, they should be easy enough to pick.

He tosses the smartphone to Shouto. "Send a fax to the hospital. Make it look like it's from the FBI or the CIA or something and mark it "Confidential" on the cover page. I don't care what's actually in the file - it could be complete gibberish, for all I care."

Shouto gets to work, while Izuku removes the lid from a tiny hidden panel on his prosthetic arm. Out falls a set of lockpicks, and he puts them to good use.

(There's a reason that he personally customizes his prosthetics.)

"Get your handcuffs off, put on a couple of pairs of the disposable gloves from the counter, then wait until I give the word," he tells the others through the vent, then picks up the flip phone once he hears the satisfying click of the cuffs unlocking. He tosses the lockpicks to Shouto and says, "Give me a thumbs-up or something when the fax goes through."

Shouto catches them without looking in Izuku's direction and nods once, most of his focus directed towards the tiny screen of the smartphone.

Izuku opens the flip phone and starts scrolling through the contact list. "What are the officer's names?" he asks Tsuyu, but it's Eijirou who answers.

"One of them's called Brady something. Johnson? Yeah, that sounds right. The ex-air force guy is Jimmy Grey. I don't know about the third one, though. Sally, maybe?"

"How can you tell he was in the air force?" Tsuyu asks, which saves Izuku from having to do it because _huh?_

"They have distinctive foot steps," Eijirou says cheerfully.

"Okay, whatever, don't tell us," Izuku mutters under his breath, still scrolling through the contacts list.

"He's right, though," Shouto adds absently, more focused on the fax thing than the conversation.

_Huh?_

Before Izuku can question that statement, he zeroes in on a name. Luckily enough, there's a Jimmy G on the phone's contact list.

It takes a little bit of finagling to make the phone appear to be an unlisted caller, but not nearly as much as Izuku was afraid it would. He manages to make it happen, and he doesn't even have to ask Shouto for help.

Izuku selects the name, takes a deep breath, then does his best impersonation of Iida with a Midwestern accent. "Hello, good citizen!" he bellows without actually bellowing when Jimmy picks up, something that took years of imitating to perfect. Iida sounds loud, but only if you're within about three feet of him. "This is Agent Tom Hopkins from the FBI. We understand that you have one of our men!"

"I - uh, what?" stutters the man on the other end of the line.

"Is this not James 'Jimmy' Grey of the Massachusetts Police Force?" Izuku booms, relatively softly. It's a projection thing, mostly, not volume.

"I - yes, sir, this is Officer Grey. What can I do for you, sir?"

"That's better!" Out of the corner of his eye, Izuku sees Shouto give him a thumbs-up, then get to work picking the lock of his cuffs. Good. "Now, Officer Grey, we have sent you some highly CONFIDENTIAL information! Please go to the nearest fax machine to retrieve it, then relocate yourself and your compatriots to the nearest secure area. No civilians, and preferably no security cameras! We have upped your clearance for today only so that you can understand _exactly_ what the situation is! One of the criminals you have caught today is one of our agents, undercover, so, please, read the file and you'll know what to do!"

"R-right, of course, Agent Hopping."

Izuku catches the lockpicks Shouto throws back to him, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder as he clicks them back into place and slips the panel back over them. "It's Agent Hopkins. Yes, thank you, son! Good luck!"

Izuku hangs up and counts to twenty, just to make sure the cops don't decide to check up on them before they go collect the fax. Shouto tosses him the box of disposable gloves and he sticks them into his pocket while he's waiting.

Izuku takes a deep breath, steeling himself, then says, "Okay, everybody out the windows."

Shouto looks at him askance for a split second, then his poker face smoothes back into place. He manages a fairly credible unperturbed, "Okay."

Izuku gestures for him to open the window, then takes a running start and swan-dives through it because he's an idiot and also the concussion is probably still impeding his judgement.

Wow. His soulmate's going to _actually_ kill him when he finds out about this. It's so much worse than wearing sweaty work-out clothes in public.

Izuku actually manages to roll to break his momentum this time, which is good because it doesn't jar either his head or his shoulder. In fact, he makes it through relatively unscathed.

Izuku stands up, brushes the dirt from his shirt with the back of his gloves, and waves up at the others from the ground. Shouto doesn't quite have enough time to mask his grimace, but Eijirou and Tsuyu seem pretty enthusiastic about it.

Tsuyu doesn't bother with the running start and just hops out the window. Because why not. She lands squarely on her feet in a crouch, which makes Izuku wince for her ankles. It's a long way to fall, even if it's only two storeys and she's used to base-jumping off buildings. She just walks it off, though, so apparently it doesn't affect her much.

Izuku's a little jealous, honestly.

Eijirou's the next to jump, in almost exactly the same way as Izuku but probably with more finesse, since he's more than likely been trained how not to die while jumping out of buildings.

Izuku kind of wishes his insurance company had deemed it useful enough for him to learn. It would've come in handy more than you'd think during his time investigating claims and limiting insurance payouts.

His job makes - well, _made_ \- him sound like an average salary man but _wow _had he ever underestimated the amount of physical activity involved.

He ruthlessly stifles a wince at the noise Eijirou makes as he jumps, since he apparently decided it was necessary to yell, "Wahoo!" as he falls.

Shouto follows a few moments later, form eerily identical to Eijirou's, but not without rolling his eyes and huffing and making his disdain for the plan exceedingly clear.

He lands with a quiet _thump _next to Izuku, and takes his hand when Izuku offers to help him up.

Izuku takes a centering breath, then directs them to dust as much dirt as they can from their clothes and pull on their gloves before they head to the parking lot.

The hospital is not small, even though it's on the outskirts of the city, and the parking lot is more than half full. It's not like they don't have a lot of options to choose from. But then Izuku's eyes land on the police car and he can't resist.

"Tsuyu, can you hotwire a police car?"

She grins and says, mock-offended, "Izuku-chan, how could you possibly ask such a question?"

Izuku laughs. "Okay, let's go. Don't remove your gloves if you can help it - the less evidence, the better."

"Oh - in that case, should I blow up the phones they took from us?" Shouto offers, holding up the doctor's smartphone.

Izuku feels vindicated. He _knew_ Shouto had done something weird to his phone. "Yeah, that's probably for the best."

Tsuyu can indeed hotwire the police car. It takes her a whole thirty seconds, including the door locks. Izuku's pretty impressed.

He insists on driving, because he's pretty sure a missing police car will get noticed pretty quickly, even if it's one of those ones that are the car equivalent of plain-clothes officers. And, as luck would have it, he's pretty sure that the place where he parked, a couple blocks from the warehouse? It's right next to a used car dealership.

It's only about a five minute drive from the hospital, even with Izuku driving slightly under the speed limit as usual. He tries to ignore the fact that EIjirou keeps checking over his shoulder for a tail - he's a little insulted that they don't trust him enough to know when he's being followed. But, well, it's been a rough day, what with being exploded and all, so Izuku supposes he can make allowances for sudden resurges of paranoia.

From there, it's easy enough to park the cop car with the other for-sale units on the lot, steal a price sign from a car a few spots down and put on the police car's windshield, and then get into Izuku's rental and drive away.

"So," he asks blandly, once they've hit the highway. "Where to?"

Eijirou cracks his knuckles. "I wouldn't say no to bruising Petersen up a bit," he says brightly. His smile is doing the thing again where it emphasises the sharpness of his gleaming filed teeth - it's pretty intimidating to Izuku, and he's not even the one it's directed at.

"I thought I'd clear out his safes a little," Tsuyu adds.

"I was going to use his company credit card to send a bunch of hentai to his office," Shouto says blandly, causing Izuku to almost crash the car when he starts coughing after his spit-take because _what._

"Or…" Izuku says, drawing the word out to three times its usual length. "We could...not do any of that."

He feels three gazes lock on him immediately and shivers a little under their intensity. He can feel goosebumps rising up on his flesh arm, and it isn't because of the air conditioning. He's pretty sure it's broken in this car anyway.

"Do you...have a different plan?" Eijirou asks cautiously, giving him the benefit of the doubt because it's not like Izuku is exactly _known_ for his revenge plots.

Izuku does a little half shrug thing, keeping both hands on the wheel. "I have the beginnings of a plan," he admits. "We'd get revenge and more than likely a decent sum of money. But we'd need a safe house or something to discuss it."

"378 Thaw Road," Shouto says immediately, without hesitation.

Izuku feels, more than sees, the other two start. Which is fair - giving away the location of one of your safe houses to a few people you've only known well for a couple of days? It goes against basically every rule in the thief handbook. Even _Izuku_ knows that.

(At least it gets their penetrating gazes off Izuku's back so he can go back to focusing on driving.)

The little spark of vindictiveness that Izuku had pretended not to see in Shouto's eye earlier has made a triumphant return. "Izuku's plans are always interesting." Shouto says, before adding pleasantly, in a way that as good as ensures that neither of them will take him up on his offer, "I can always book a first-class ticket to anywhere but here for anyone who wants to back out."

Predictably, Eijirou replies with a "No way, man! It's not manly to take a job and not see it through!"

Tsuyu just nods her agreement.

Izuku only vaguely knows this town, so the car is mostly silent while Shouto directs him towards Thaw Road. It allows him to mull over their problem, examine it from all angles, and assemble the final pieces to his - admittedly, probably too elaborate - plan.

.

.

.

Shouto ushers them all into one of his third-tier safe houses. He's not actually stupid enough to take them to one of his main ones, even if they've been working remarkably well together. Especially for a bunch of thieves and an _insurance investigator_, of all things.

The others warily take in their surroundings, not that there's much to take in. It's one room, an open floor plan, and sparsely decorated. There's a kitchen in one corner that probably isn't well-stocked - if Fuyumi ever saw it, she'd have a fit - and a table and a few chairs around it. In the corner directly across from the kitchen, there's a bed with a few rolled-up futons-slash-sleeping-bags shoved underneath it. They're mostly there to make sure that any intruders don't have a convenient place to hide, rather than any particular desire for company. Then, on the wall facing the door, there's a giant flat screen TV, which can double as a computer monitor when needs must, and a couch and a couple chairs angled towards it in a U-shape. There's nothing on the floors, not even a plant, so Shouto doesn't really know why Eijirou bothers to do a spot-check of the room to clear it.

(Shouto wonders what the others think of him, based on the room. He thinks Izuku would probably tell him, if he asked. But does he really want to know?)

Shouto makes a beeline for the TV and crouches down in front of it. He carefully removes his laptop from his bag and hooks it up to the HDMI cord hanging from the TV. The others settle on the couch and chairs behind him, no one particularly keen on sitting too close together. Tsuyu and Eijirou both take an armchair while Izuku sits on the sofa, though Eijirou shifts his chair so that he can keep the only entry point in his line of sight.

Shouto smirks. That means that he hasn't noticed that the TV screen is precisely angled so that it reflects an image of the door, or that there are mirrors mounted on the ceiling so that they reflect an image of the door onto his glass coffee table. Of course, there are also the cameras that are trained on the door and provide a direct feed to his laptop, but Shouto expects Eijirou to have noticed them. Everyone's probably noticed them by now.

"This is your last chance to back out," he says flatly, not taking his eyes off his laptop screen. "I can still have first class tickets to just about anywhere on the planet in the next ten minutes, and you'll never have to see any of us again."

There's complete silence from behind him. It's entirely possible that none of them are even breathing, for fear of it being taken as backing out.

"No takers?" He's not really surprised. There's something about Izuku (and Shouto still can't believe he's letting them call him by his given name) that just...brings them all together, despite their differences. It's pretty incredible that he's managed to keep them all working together so far - Shouto did background checks on all of them before agreeing to the job, and they all have a track record of working alone - and it doesn't hurt that Izuku is built like a brick shit house and has a smile that can light up any room -

...Shouto's probably going to need to call Momo later. For. Business reasons. Obviously.

(Not for gay panic, clearly.)

He takes their extended silence as an answer and picks up his laptop before taking his seat with only mild hesitation. He ends up sitting next to Izuku on the couch, because he really isn't well-equipped for guests. The only reason he has multiple pieces of furniture is because he doesn't like having to sit in the same spot for too long (a habit courtesy of his asshole of a sperm donor).

"So, dude. What's the plan?" Eijirou asks, his eyes unsettlingly focused on Izuku.

Izuku jumps, like he's not used to being addressed directly. "Um, well, first I'd like to make sure that everyone is actually on board, and I wouldn't blame any of you if you wanted to back out, because, well, he _did_ just try to kill us - "

"More importantly," Tsuyu croaks, "he didn't pay us."

"What - how is _that_ more important?" Izuku yelps, flustered. It's cute.

"We're thieves," says Shouto, because _really_. It's pretty much common sense. "We take that personally." The others voice their agreement.

Izuku covers his face with his hands and says something that sounds kind of like _there's something wrong with all of you._

Well. Shouto supposes that's not untrue. It does, after all, take a certain kind of person to become a thief.

Izuku takes a few deep breaths, in and out, and takes a few seconds to just process. When he's done - more likely just giving up on understanding thieves - he leans back against the sofa and says, "Okay, so there's good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Bad," they all say immediately, in unison. It's nice that they're in agreement on this front.

"Right, okay, well, it's kind of - " Izuku's getting flustered again, apparently not having expected that reaction. "It's - well, it's a combination of good _and_ bad news, really, um - "

Shouto shifts his attention to his computer screen, so that Izuku worry about making eye contact while he's trying to get his words in order. Shouto's been told that the way he doggedly makes eye contact with people can be...disconcerting, sometimes. It's one of the reasons he tends to wear a hood pulled down over his face when he has to interact with people.

So, instead of staring at Izuku, he opens his browser and starts surfing news websites for mentions of Petersen and Rockwell.

He's a little uncomfortable with his covered eye facing the majority of the group, even though it's just Tsuyu and Izuku. Tsuyu, he knows through Momo and Jirou - they've vouched for her, so he guesses she's okay. Izuku has a very strict moral code, even if it's apparently a little more malleable than Shouto had thought -

Oh.

He _could_ just turn on his eyepatch.

(This is probably one of the reasons that Jirou says he has something she calls 'dumb bitch disease.' Frankly, in this case, Shouto has no arguments.)

In a casual movement that, to anyone else, would look like him adjusting his eyepatch, Shouto presses the button that turns on the visual input. It's a pretty neat setup that he's created, though he says so himself. To compensate for the severely impaired vision in his eye, the one on the side that used to look like _him_, he's mounted what is essentially a one-way fisheye camera lens with the magnification increased to mitigate the blurriness. No amount of tinkering would allow him to _completely_ regain his eyesight, of course, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't added a few extra tricks. Sure, it might look like a standard eyepatch on the outside, but regular eyepatches don't _generally_ allow their wearers infrared vision.

It does make it a little more difficult to see his screen, but - since it's been maybe ten years since his first prototype - he's used to it by now.

Izuku saying, "S-so, the good news is - " is enough to redirect Shouto's attention back to him, though he keeps pretending to scroll through the news absently. "The good news is that Petersen thinks we're dead, so we have the element of surprise...the bad news is that Petersen knows all of our faces, so the minute that we get anywhere near him, alarms will go off."

"Yes, that does seem like a problem," Tsuyu agrees pleasantly, curling her legs underneath her so that she's crouching on top of the chair. "But only if we get caught."

Izuku runs his fingers through his hair, tugging at it a little, then something on his laptop screen drags Shouto's eyes away from the display of frustration.

He frowns and rereads the article just to make sure.

Then he double-checks the copies of the files he wasn't technically supposed to have made, but only idiots didn't keep backups and Shouto was not, contrary to Jirou's belief, a total idiot -

...Shit.

Shouto throws the article up onto the television screen so everyone can see it.

"So, apparently, we didn't even steal the plans _back_ from Rockwell. We just...stole them."

The article is basically just a statement from Rockwell Prosthetics saying that someone corrupted and stole their data on a project they've been working on for years and would likely have changed the entire field of prosthetics. They intend to prosecute whoever did it to the full extent of the law.

"...You're sure?" Izuku asks finally.

Shouto shrugs. "I mean, there were internal timestamps on the project, in the code. I don't see why anyone would have a reason to fake those."

Izuku stares at the TV screen, face hardening. "Well, we're definitely getting this bastard now."

Shouto rolls his eyes and exchanges a look with Eijirou. _Like we weren't before?_

"Izuku-chan." Tsuyu doesn't have even a hint of mirth on her face, despite the situation, which causes Shouto to sober immediately. "What's in it for you?"

That's a good question. They're thieves - being jilted is enough for them to take action, but Izuku? Izuku's an honest man, and good, honest men don't make a habit of taking revenge on people, even if they're short-changed.

Izuku answers with an uncharacteristic frown. "Isn't it enough that we've stolen from an innocent company? We've probably ruined thousands of lives, got hundreds of people fired - what?"

Silence and raised eyebrows are his only response.

Izuku sighs. "...Also," he adds begrudgingly, "he used the words of my mentor against me."

"What, All Might?" Shouto blurts, immediately outing himself as a fanboy by using that name instead of Yagi or Toshinori or _literally anything else_. He is _such_ a disaster.

"Who the _hell_ would do something like that?!" Eijirou growls.

"Well, now we're going to crush this man like a bug," Tsuyu says blandly, but not without a steely glint in her eyes.

Because, well.

Everyone who was anyone in the underground circle of thieves knew about how All Might had died. Using that against one of his proteges was just..._wrong._

Even thieves have standards.

Shouto kind of wants to lean closer to Izuku, just a little bit, so that he can brush their shoulders together. For. Comfort, or something? He doesn't know _why_ he's having the impulse, though, so he ignores it.

(Tsuyu's looking at him knowingly. He bets Momo's told her something. Or maybe Jirou. He knows that they have lunch together occasionally.)

Izuku's eyes are watery with tears, and Shouto _does not_ know how to deal with that, so instead he blurts out abruptly, "So? What's the plan?"

Somehow, amazingly, this manages to stop the tears from happening, and Shouto internally sighs with relief. This is why he doesn't work with other people.

Well, that, and that he'd probably end up blurting out his _entire life story_ within the first twenty-four hours.

Izuku's turned back to the screen, and he's staring at it intensely. It doesn't really seem like he's actually reading the article, though, so Shouto switches the screen to his cognition-improving screen saver. It's what he looks at when he's stuck on a piece of coding.

(He calls it 'cognition-improving,' but it's literally just one of the standard Microsoft screensavers - the one with the colored lines.)

Shouto can almost _see_ the gears in Izuku's head turning. They're going so fast that he's a little afraid steam might start coming out Izuku's ears. He's mumbling something under his breath, but Shouto can't make out more than a couple syllables here and there.

Izuku twitches, coming to a conclusion. His face twists into... _something_. The resulting expression unrecognizable, unreadable, but it's definitely a...thing...that his face is doing.

"What is it?" Eijirou prompts.

"I think we're going to have to call in my...soulmate."

Izuku says it like he's regretting every choice he's ever made to lead him to this point.

Shouto's eyes immediately dart to Izuku's hands to double-check, but...no, Izuku isn't wearing a ring. Most people buy one of those cheap mood rings to signify that they've found their soulmate - something about getting to know each other better? Or being able to get a better read on each other? Shouto admits he hasn't read much literature about it, because, well, he wears an _eyepatch_ most of the time, even though he still has some vision left in his eye, which pretty much invalidates him from easily finding his soulmate.

(If he even has one.)

Usually the mood rings are replaced by engagement rings or promise rings or marriage bands, and so on, or at least that's what happened with Momo and Jirou. They're pretty much Shouto's only idea of what 'normal' looks like, even though the business they're in isn't _exactly_ legal.

But Izuku isn't wearing a ring - not even a mood ring - even though he already knows who his soulmate is.

So that means that Shouto might have a chance.

...He _really_ needs to call Momo.

.

.

.

Katsuki's phone starts ringing in the middle of what would usually be his lunch break and he is _not pleased. _He doesn't check caller ID because he doesn't need to - he knows _exactly_ who's calling because the ringtone is _that goddamn song_.

He closes his eyes, counts to ten, and seriously considers not answering.

Because it's fucking _Deku_.

...It's his fucking _soulmate_, even though they've mutually decided that it's platonic, so of course he's going to answer it. He's kidding himself if he thinks he won't. He's not a _complete_ piece of shit.

He counts to ten again, just to make sure he's in a semi-decent headspace, before accepting the call. "What."

There's a beat of silence. Then, a nervous: "...Heeeeeeey, Kacchan."

Katsuki sighs deeply, trying to restrain his anger. Even Deku's fucking _voice_ is enough to raise his ire. _Especially _the tone he's using, because that's the awkward tone Deku uses when he wants to ask a favor. Katsuki isn't going to enjoy this conversation, is he.

"What do you want, Deku."

There's nervous laughter coming from the other end of the line. That's his only answer. Shit, it's even worse than he was expecting, isn't it. Damn it. It's a sign of how much their...tenuous relationship has improved that Katsuki isn't immediately hanging up the phone.

Katsuki counts to ten again.

Groans internally.

Says flatly, "Spit it out, nerd."

There's a pause - so long that Katsuki checks his phone to make sure the connection hasn't dropped. He's in an airport right now - they're not exactly known for their fucking superb cell service. Then Deku says, all in a rush, "...ImightbeinasituationandImightneedyoutogriftforme."

It's only because he's known Deku all his life that Katsuki is able to figure out what he's saying.

It's only because they're soulmates (and Katsuki has a ton of shit to make up for from when they were teenagers) that he doesn't say no immediately.

Instead, he says, "You _know_ how much I fucking hate grifting, Deku."

Sensing weakness, Deku goes straight for the fucking throat. "Yeah, but you're the _best_ at it."

Goddamn Deku. He always knows the right buttons to push.

(Katsuki knows he isn't the best - that's Hagakure fucking Tooru - but he is _damn close._)

"I'll think about it," Katsuki says, and then immediately hangs up. Deku's a fucking idiot if he thinks that Katsuki won't end up helping him in some way or another - it'll count towards the goal his therapist has set him for this month, and she'll be happy about him taking steps towards 'reconciling' with his soulmate. Fucking idiot. She still doesn't believe him when he tells her they've decided they're platonic. Apparently, their 'story' is 'so cute it can't possibly be platonic!' She seems pretty damn sure that if they talk it out, they'll come to realize that they're 'meant to be together!' It makes him want to gag.

It's not like platonic soulmates are fucking _uncommon_. The fucking universe draws soulmates together and plays whatever shitty song it's decided is _theirs_, but it's up to the two (or more, in some cases) of them to figure out their fucking relationship from there. It doesn't have to be some shitty-ass romantic montage. There's no fucking - _guarantee_ that they'll be good romantic partners. He and Deku sure the fuck aren't. Being 'soulmates' just means that the universe has decided to get up off its ass and direct you towards a person who will make your shitty life a little...brighter. You don't have to fuck them - or even really fucking _like_ them - to have them in your life.

His current therapist looks like she's turning out to be one of those damn motherfuckers who believe that any people who decide their bond is fucking platonic are lying or repressing some shit or something. How the fuck did an ignorant piece of shit like her get a degree.

(There's a _reason _he's never fucking discussed his sexuality with her.)

He's thinking he might need to start shopping for new therapists again. Damn it. Why did Aizawa have to fucking retire.

His phone starts ringing again seconds later. _You are my sunshine, my only sunshine -_

He half-considers letting it go to the answering machine, but that fucking song's going to be stuck in his head all day if it keeps playing. Fucking - ugh. He's already been stuck in a tin can for twelve hours - no point in adding a fucking earworm on top of that. He's already _pretty fucking close _to exploding as is.

Katsuki answers the call, because of course he does. "Fucking _what_, sunshine."

He clenches his hand into a fist, knuckles popping and the black ring around his middle finger creaking under the pressure, because that is _not_ what he meant to say. This is why he _hates_ that damn song.

The only _marginally_ good thing about it is that he's done it so often that Deku doesn't even register it anymore. "Um, Kacchan, there's something you should probably know first - "

"Idiot," Katsuki breaks in, stopping him before he can start rambling. "You should know by now what happens when you get admitted to the fucking _hospital_."

He can almost picture the confused expression on Deku's dumb face. "...They call my next-of-kin and soulm - oh."

"Yeah, fucking _oh_. Send a car to the airport already, dumbass."

Deku mumbles something about sending him information about whatever the fuck it is he needs him for then hangs up. Serves him right for worrying - no, damn it, Bakugou Katsuki did not do _worry_. Even when he suddenly gets a call about his soulmate being in the hospital in fucking _America_, of all places. Damn it.

Minutes later, a taxi pulls up to the curb in front of Katsuki, just as his phone _dings_ with the sound of an incoming message. He ignores it, instead dumping his suitcase in the back seat then sliding in beside it. The driver pulls away from the curb and back into traffic before Katsuki can say a word, which is good, because Katsuki doesn't actually know where the fuck Deku's holed himself up. He contemplates staring out the window for the next however-long. Except that that's boring, so he may as well just read the file Deku just sent him. It has to be better than fucking - abandoned warehouses, or whatever.

Then he reads the file and -

What the absolute _fuck_ has Deku gotten himself into?

.

.

.

The door to Shouto's apartment - though, can it be called an apartment? It's this weird, like, post-modern-y minimalist thing and Eijirou doesn't really like it, but, hey, to each their own! - _slams _open, like someone's kicked it. Eijirou's on his feet between the door and the others in a defensive stance before the doorknob hits the wall. Shouto flanks him, which is a little weird, but he's not going to say anything about it. He's in great shape, especially for a tech guy! It's very manly of him!

Then the guy who blasted the door open steps foot into the room and Eijirou forgets all about Shouto because _hot damn, that boy is fine._

He's pale with blond spiky hair, and he has the kind of ambiguous build that could come from working out or martial arts or any number of things, really. He's not what Eijirou would exactly call _muscular_, per se, but definitely toned and slender enough that a lot of muscle would look kind of weird anyway. He's wearing a black shirt, baggy jeans, and a dark green sweatshirt.

He says, "What the fuck have you got yourself into, Deku."

Eijirou's brain kind of stalls for a second when the (_hot) _stranger rips off his jacket, revealing a couple of tattoos on his (_muscled)_ arms that Eijirou's a little too far away to see clearly and causing his ear piercings to glint in the stark overhead lights. The stranger throws his jacket towards Izuku, and Shouto makes to grab it - but it's not like any of them were really expecting that, so he misses and it kinda...hits Izuku in the face.

"Thanks, Kacchan," Izuku says drily as it slides down his face and onto his folded arms. "I was starting to think that you'd forgotten you'd...acquired this."

The newly named 'Kacchan' snorts derisively and stalks into Shouto's safe house, dragging a small suitcase with him. He kicks the door closed behind him. "Not my fault you leave your shit at my house."

Izuku rolls his eyes expressively. "Yes, I left it at your place because you _refused_ to let go of it when I needed to get to the airport."

Eijirou _thinks_ he sees some weird expression flit across Shouto's face, but suddenly he's really, _really _focused on the glint of polished black in the general area of 'Kacchan's mouth.

Is…

Is that a tongue piercing?

(Eijirou is _so fucked_.)

But, hey, wait a second - wasn't 'Kacchan' the name of Izuku's soulmate? That's _gotta_ be a nickname, right? It's kinda cutesy, though… Like, it fits him, sorta? But he doesn't really seem the type to let just anyone call him that - oh, duh, _soulmates_. Eijirou should really think these things through.

Shit, being Izuku's soulmate means he's off limits.

It's fine.

Eijirou can be a bro.

Definitely.

'Kacchan' stalks towards the couch, shoving his suitcase over by the table in the corner kitchen, before stopping maybe two inches from Eijirou with a solid stance and crossed arms. 'Kacchan' clicks his tongue contemptuously (and, yup, that is _definitely_ a tongue stud, _damn_), and looks them all up and down. He rolls his eyes dismissively, all of his body language practically screaming that he found them wanting.

"Bakugou Katsuki," he introduces himself grudgingly.

(_Eijirou. Is. So. Fucked._)

Bakugou's glare zeroes in on Izuku, and he closes his eyes and counts to ten before leaping over the couch and tackling him to the floor. He somehow manages to get Izuku into a head lock and starts grinding his fist into Izuku's hair.

"_What. The. Fuck. Deku."_

Izuku looks pretty resigned to his fate, so Eijirou's not too worried. It doesn't look like anything more dangerous than a particularly violent noogie, so it's probably fine. Especially when Izuku sighs and says, "I'm fine, Kacchan. It's not like I _actually _got blown up this time."

"Yeah? Then why's your fucking _head_ all wrapped up?"

"I...may have a minor concussion. And some burns. And maybe a couple scrapes from when I jumped out the hospital window."

Bakugou throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. "The _fuck_, Deku."

Izuku brushes off his shirt and stands up. "I'm _fine_. It wasn't even that high. Two storeys, tops."

He offers Bakugou a hand. Bakugou hesitates for a split second, then clasps it, using the momentum to swing himself past Izuku and onto the couch. He lands soundly, then sprawls across the furniture like he owns it and _they're_ the ones intruding. He crosses his arms and Eijirou can't help but..._admire_ the way it puts his biceps on display.

Izuku just sighs like he expected that, then shoves Bakugou's legs out of the way because apparently he is _fearless_ and sits down on the middle cushion. He turns to look at Shouto and pats the cushion next to him in invitation. Shouto looks at him for a moment before swinging his legs over the back of the sofa so he can sit on it. He rests his feet on the cushion, instead of using it for its intended purpose, and picks up his laptop. Eijirou and Tsuyu take that as their cue and situate themselves back into their armchairs.

Once they're all situated, Izuku clears his throat. "So. I brought in Kacchan because, well, we kind of need a new face if we want to prevent Petersen from catching wind of the fact that we're alive. Also, he's a great grifter, and that's going to be pretty important for the plan I have…" Izuku trails off and starts muttering under his breath until Bakugou elbows him in the ribs. It's a practiced motion, and Izuku barely even flinches.

Izuku shakes his head. "Right, um. Introductions. Kacchan, this is _sh0Ut0_, the hacker - " Shouto nods cordially from where he's seated on the back of the couch where it meets the armrest.

" - Tsuyu, the thief - "

"Hello, Bakugou-chan."

" - and Kirishima Eijirou, the hitter."

Eijirou gives him a wide smile and accompanies it with a friendly wave.

Bakugou just _looks_ at him for a second, then snorts. "How come _you're _the only fucker with a full name," he drawls.

Eijirou's brain stalls for a split second before he shoves his brain back into gear. He opens his mouth and hopes that something smooth comes out, but what actually happens is that he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and says brightly, " 'Cause I'm the only one with nothing left to lose by spreading my full name around."

Which, wow, was _super _depressing and _not_ what he'd meant to say _at all_.

Even if it's true.

Bakugou blinks, surprise flitting over his features with just a quirk of his (pierced, shit)eyebrow and a widening of his dark grey eyes, before he throws back his head with a short bark of unexpected laughter.

(_Fuck,_ he's wearing eyeliner, too. Damn it, Eijirou, _be a bro._)

Bakugou smooths his expression back into his original relaxed scowl. "Damn, you're all right, shitty hair," he says before slumping back against the arm rest.

Eijirou feels a little pinprick of pleasure-pain in his heart, which is strange because he was almost _positive_ that it had turned to stone by now. There's also a weird sort of buzzing sound in his ears, though, so maybe it's just an injury from the explosion or the hospital making itself known. It's kinda weird though, because Eijirou's never really felt anything like it before, and he's had pretty much every injury you can recover from under the sun (and a few most people couldn't).

His eyes are automatically drawn to the arm Bakugou has draped over the back of the couch, following the lines of his tendons naturally to his hands (and_ fingers, _damn). There's a black metallic ring glinting on his middle finger, which - Eijirou's pretty sure that's nothing to do with soulmates? A quick glance at his other hand, then Izuku's, confirm that neither of them are wearing any other type of ring, not even mood rings, which is...confusing. They _are _soulmates, right?

There's also something about the black ring - some...significance, maybe, something he should probably know; maybe Shinsou or someone had mentioned it at some point - but he can't quite put his finger on it…

Well. People have always said that his head is rock hard. It'll come to him eventually.

In the meantime, he should really try to stop thirsting over Bakugou. They have a job to do.

Shouto does something on his computer, making the screensaver on the TV disappear and revealing a split screen. On one side, there's a picture of Petersen with his bodyguard in the background; on the other, there's automatically scrolling text. "I did a background check on Mr. Franklin Petersen when he came to me with the job, obviously. He's the - well, their job titles are weird, but he's basically the vice president of the tech division. Specifically, he's in charge of research and development. He graduated from MIT with middling grades, but his father had an in with the company he's working for now, Bettencourt Healthcare - he was on the board, I think. It's nepotism at its finest. Anyway, Petersen made his way up the corporate ladder and now he's also in line for a seat on the board of directors. We...probably made sure he's the one who gets the empty seat by giving him those plans. Also, the military just signed some sort of contracts with Bettencourt - that's probably what the meeting Petersen was talking about was, so the contracts likely have something to do with the plans we delivered."

"What about the bodyguard?" Izuku asks, and Eijirou looks the guy in the background a little more closely. Sure, the guy _looks_ like a bodyguard, even with those extra piercings, but there's something a little...off about him. He can't quite put his finger on what's bothering him, though. The stance is right, the clothes are right, but there's still..._something _weird there.

Shouto obligingly zooms in on the probably-bodyguard. "I don't know much about him," he admits grudgingly. "He showed up maybe two weeks ago and his paperwork hasn't been digitized yet, so I can't even tell you his name."

Izuku's silent for a second. "...What was that you said about military contracts?" he asks finally, brow furrowing in contemplation. It's an expression that makes Eijirou instinctively wary, though he doesn't really get why.

Bakugou snickers (and _damn_, why does he have to be cute _and_ hot?). "Oh, the dickhead's _fucked _now," he says, lips curling into a sharp smile. "That's his '_you're gonna get _owned_, bitch'_ face."

Izuku rolls his eyes, but otherwise ignores Bakugou. His gaze is still sharp and focused when he says, "Hey, Shouto?"

Shouto blinks placidly in response, tearing his eyes away from where he's mostly just been watching the interaction between Bakugou and Izuku. Eijirou doesn't blame him - that's exactly what he and Tsuyu are doing, too. It's an..._interesting_ dynamic - kind of, like...brotherly, almost? Except that's not quite it, and it's...choppy in some places, like the edges of two tectonic plates with a transform boundary at a fault line grating together as they try to pass each other. Or something. Eijirou's not all that great at geology. Or similes. Or would that be a metaphor?

Eijirou's broken from his musings by Izuku asking, with a wry grin, "You know how you weren't supposed to make copies of the files we gave Petersen?"

"Why, I would _never_ go back on my word like that. Why would you even imply such a thing. I'm insulted," Shouto says emotionlessly, in a way that makes it pretty clear that he did, in fact, make copies.

Izuku rolls his eyes expressively. "Show me the copies."

"Here they are," Shouto adds a moment later, after typing something on his keyboard and flicking the results onto the TV screen so everyone can see. Even Bakugou leans forward, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees so that he can see it better. He looks kinda like Sherlock Holmes.

Eijirou glances at the plans, but they don't really make all that much sense to him. He's never been particularly adept at electronics or anything like that - he can change a tire and operate equipment, but that's about it.

He exchanges a look with Tsuyu, who seems to be in the same boat.

The way that Shouto's eyes have just slightly widened, though - that probably means that he can figure out the purpose of the wiring, or something, and Eijirou thinks whatever it is must be pretty darn incredible if it's getting Shouto to show an actual emotion on his face.

Izuku's eyes look like they're about to pop out of his head. Right, he has a prosthetic hand, doesn't he? Of course he'd be able to understand the designs.

If Eijirou squints, he can _maybe_ barely make out the general shape of an arm. There seems to be a lot more circuitry then is probably strictly necessary, though? He could be wrong, though. It's not like he has much experience with prosthetic limbs, aside from that one job in Calcutta a year ago. But that probably didn't count, since he was kind of too busy dodging the gunfire coming from the false leg to pay too much attention to its construction.

Man, his life is _weird_.

Bakugou lets out a low whistle, reclining back into the sofa's backrest. "Holy _fucking __**shit**__**.**_**"**

Because _of course_ he's _smart_, too. Damn, Allah really went all out on this one.

And, you know, he's probably known Izuku for a long time, right? Eijirou's not entirely sure when he actually got the prosthetic, but the way he moves with it, like it's an extension of his body and not a separate entity, suggests that he's had it for a while. So of course Bakugou would've picked up something about prosthetics, through...osmosis or something, if nothing else.

But, yeah. Eijirou still knows fuck all.

So he takes the (figurative) bullet and raises his hand. "Yeah, sorry, dude. I have literally no idea what this means."

Tsuyu nods in agreement. It's nice to have someone on his side, for once.

Izuku leans back against the sofa, shifting slightly towards Shouto to avoid pinning Bakugou's arm to the backrest. He's still staring at the screen, eyes in danger of bursting out of his skull.

Eijirou saw that happen to a guy once. It wasn't pretty.

Izuku closes his eyes and rubs them with the heels of his hands, like he's checking to make sure he's not seeing things. The ensuing evidence of his mouth dropping open, causing him to gape like a fish, seems to suggest that he's not.

"Okay" Izuku says finally. "That is - "

" - wow." Shouto finishes the sentence for him.

"Izuku-chan?"

Izuku clears his throat. "So, um, basically." He pauses, and Eijirou can almost see the words flitting around in his brain and how he's having trouble choosing the right ones.

Bakugou butts in to save him the trouble. "Basically, it's a fucking robot arm."

Shouto nods, like that's a decent description. He's still staring at the plans, not making eye contact with any of them as he puzzles over them.

Izuku opens his mouth to refute the statement, then closes it, looking thoughtful. "Yeah, that's actually a pretty good description. It's a robot arm that connects to all of the available nerves in your stump and responds to synapses firing in your brain like your original arm would. It looks like this is just a prototype, but it should greatly improve fine motor function, which is probably what the military is interested in…"

Eijirou frowns. "Nope. That's _definitely_ not it." He's former special ops - he _knows_ how the military works. He can't read the plans well enough to tell what it is that they actually want, though. Man, he really should've taken a tech class or something during his brief stint at community college for that job a few years back.

Izuku looks at him askance. "What do you mean? It would make sense that they'd want to better take care of the soldiers who are invalidated home. Or," he adds when Bakugou scoffs, rolling his eyes. "If you want to be cynical about it, they'd want to give their higher-ranking officers more mobility and more perks to encourage more low-ranking soldiers to do reckless things in the hopes of upward mobility - or, even if the military just offered the _possibility_ of prosthetics this good, they'd get a lot more people enlisting - "

"Eijirou's right," Shouto cuts in before Izuku can start spiralling, still studying the plans on the screen. "It took me a while to find, but - look."

Shouto shifts a little closer to Izuku, close enough that they're only barely not touching, and turns his screen so it's facing Izuku, then points at a spot on the left side. Eijirou doesn't bother trying to figure out what he's referring to. They'll tell him if he needs to know, and it's not like he has a snowball's chance in Ecuador of figuring it out on his own. The plans are far too complicated - there are too many little lines too close together, and if he looks at them for more than a few seconds he's pretty sure he'll start going cross-eyed.

...Come to think of it, he might just need glasses. Huh.

Izuku pales when he realizes what Shouto's pointing out.

"Well. That isn't ideal," he says stiltedly, and Eijirou's eyes widen because something about that sounds - bad, for reasons he doesn't quite understand.

Bakugou's eyes narrow, darting from Izuku's expression to the screen, trying to figure out what's going on. His eyebrows fly to his hairline abruptly in what seems like an involuntary movement when he finds...whatever it is he's meant to find. _"Fuck,_" he utters emphatically, running his hand through his already wild hair.

"What is it, Izuku-chan?" asks Tsuyu tersely. She doesn't seem to appreciate being kept out of the loop. Eijirou isn't particularly keen on it either, to be perfectly honest. "Not all of us can understand this."

Izuku blinks rapidly. "Right, sorry, Tsuyu. I just had a minor existential crisis. It's - fine," he says in an increasingly squeaky voice, making it clear that he is _not_, in fact, fine.

Luckily, Shouto takes over the explanation part before Izuku can reach a pitch undetectable to human ears. "The worrying part is here," he says as he zooms in on a section of the plans on the television screen - the port, it looks like. "It's a - compartment, I suppose, that can be detached from the main section, similar to the one Izuku keeps his lockpick in - but that's custom-made, isn't it."

Izuku has a lockpick in his arm? Wow, that's pretty hardcore!

Wait.

Oh.

Shit.

Yeah, now everything's coming together for Eijirou. Tsuyu still looks confused - well, as confused as her poker face ever looks - but he doesn't blame her. She's not as intimately familiar with what the military does with secrets. It's not pretty.

Eijirou takes a deep breath, bracing his shoulders. "Okay, so - best case scenario, they use it to smuggle information. Flash drives, letters, that sort of thing. Less good, but not terrible, is that they use it to smuggle important packages - they'd have to be small, so probably things like atomic weights, fuel sources, and so on. Worst case - " he hesitates, because he _really _does not want to say this, but it wouldn't be manly to let the others walk in blindly. "The worst case scenario is forced suicide bombers."

There's a sharp intake of breath from everyone in the room except for Shouto, who, strangely enough, just looks resigned, like he'd been expecting something like that.

"So if we could, like, _accidentally _spill something on that section of the plans, that'd be great,"  
Eijirou says, faux-casually, like he's not having flashbacks to his time in special ops and how much _worse_ it would've been if this technology had existed.

"...I _might_ have an idea about that, if we can pull this off," Izuku says hesitantly, and Eijirou breathes a sigh of relief. He _really_ would prefer _not_ to be responsible for the deaths of _more _soldiers, if at all possible.

"What are you thinking, Izuku-chan?" Tsuyu asks.

Izuku contemplates for a moment, then nods to himself. "Yakuza. Yes, Yakuza should do nicely."

Eijirou waits for him to elaborate on that, but he doesn't. Instead, Izuku just stares off into the middle distance, brain whirring away.

Bakugou breaks the silence after that dramatic as hell pause with a bark of laughter. "Holy shit, Deku, you haven't changed _at all._"

Izuku snaps back to the present just so he can sass Bakugou. "Kacchan, we've only been separated for, like, a week. Of course I haven't changed that much," he says dryly. "Anyway, Eijirou, you wouldn't happen to know anyone you wouldn't mind getting arrested, would you?"

Eijirou gives in and just starts laughing uncontrollably, because otherwise he'll probably do something _monumentally_ stupid.

Like kiss one of them.

Probably Bakugou, if he's being honest with himself.

His little gay heart can _not_ take this much attractiveness.

.

.

.

After Izuku finishes explaining the plan - and, Katsuki grudgingly admits, it's a pretty fucking good plan - there's the question of where they're going to use as their home base that still needs to be answered. Since they were fucking - blown up and shit, they're assuming that any safe house they've been in in the past week is toast, which is a pretty fucking wise decision coming from this bunch of dumbasses.

Shouto apparently almost forgot this place existed and had bought it through a fucking absurd number of proxies, so they figure they'll be fine there if they're in a pinch, but it was definitely bought with a single person in mind since it's fucking _tiny._

Katsuki and Izuku don't stay in Massachusetts often enough to justify buying up apartments, and it's not like they make a shit-ton of money anyway, so they've got nothing. From what he knows of Eijirou and Tsuyu, they never stay in one place long enough to put down any kind of roots, so they're pretty fucking useless in that department.

Just as Katsuki resigns himself to sleeping with one eye open in this room of motherfuckers (and Deku, he guesses), Shouto looks up from his laptop and says nonchalantly, "Oh, yeah. I own the whole floor."

Katsuki takes a deep breath, counting to ten, and exhaling. He _will not_ punch this fucker in the face. He _will not. _"And you couldn't have fucking mentioned this earlier?"

Shouto shrugs, like the frigid bastard he is. "There are three rooms on this floor - this one and two others. They look pretty much the same as this, I think."

Katsuki jerks his hand through his hair, mostly so he doesn't reach out and just _strangle_ the motherfucker. "Right, okay," he announces to the room at large. "If we're gonna fucking pull this off, I'm going to need supplies. Since I'm the only person here who _hasn't_ blown their damn cover, I'm claiming one of the other shitty rooms for me and my equipment. If you don't like it, fucking _bite me."_

He turns to leave this shithole behind him, but then fucking _Deku_ says, "W-wait, Kacchan - "

Katsuki stops, shoulders automatically tensing before he forces them to relax. This time, he has to count to twenty before he can face Deku. "_What_."

Deku winces, because he sure as fuck knows that tone of voice by now, but the nerd actually manages to say in a relatively normal manner, "You need an earbud, since our phones are probably burnt too."

Katsuki (grudgingly) concedes that's a fucking...halfway decent point, or whatever. He clicks the barbell in his tongue against his teeth tetchily, but doesn't say anything because that would be admitting fucking defeat. And Bakugou Katsuki does not fucking admit defeat.

Deku puts his shitty-ass brain to work for once in his damn life and realizes that if he forces Katsuki to socialize with these _dumbasses _for another five minutes something's going to fucking _explode _and it'll probably be Deku's fucking _head_. So he wisely delegates the task. "Eijirou, can you get Kacchan a mic? I'm not sure where you stashed them…"

Eijirou - Shitty Hair - apparently has nothing fucking better to do and hops up from his armchair, giving Katsuki a wide, too-damn-bright grin. He gestures for Katsuki to follow him the corner with the kitchen, ostensibly to check the distance or some shit - Katsuki wasn't actually paying attention because he was too busy being fucking _blinded_ by the guy's fucking _shark teeth_. What the fresh fucking hell, did he purposely polish them so they would reflect light? The fuck.

Eijirou digs around in the pockets of his cargo shorts and - is he wearing motherfucking _crocs. _No. Katsuki refuses to believe someone could make fashion choices _that _shitty. At least he isn't doing that stupid fucking thing Deku used to do, wearing a puffy vest over a sweatshirt. _That_ was a look that made Katsuki want to blow his fucking brains out, and fucking _crocs_ and _camoflage-patterned _cargo shorts _were not that much fucking better._

...Eijirou gives him the earbud. It's fucking _tiny_ \- maybe the size of a hearing aid. All the other comms he's used are fucking bluetooth headsets or some shit. How the fuck did they even fit a mic in there?

Katsuki glances up to ask how the shitty thing works, and instead meets Eijirou's eyes. He looks like he's about to start fucking salivating.

It pisses him off enough that can hear his blood roaring in his ears.

Like, yeah, Katsuki knows he's fucking attractive. It's one of the reasons he's so damn good at grifting. But do people really have to fucking stare at him like they want to _eat _him all the fucking time?

"Sorry, bro! It's just - your tattoos."

That is _not_ what this fucker had been staring at.

"Yeah?" Katsuki growls. "What about them."

Eijirou laughs, oddly restrained, apparently realizing that Katsuki could and would _fucking murder_ him if he didn't have a good answer. "Nothing, nothing. Just trying to figure out what they are."

Fine. Whatever.

"A dragonfly." Katsuki points stiffly towards his left shoulder. "A dagger - a tantō, specifically." His fingers draw a line down his forearm. "That one's pretty fucking obvious." The black band around his right bicep. "A dragon wrapped around an anchor." Slightly below the band. "And a peony on my thigh, which you sure as fucking hell ain't seeing." He rubs the fabric covering the tattoo absently.

Eijirou's eyebrows fly up. "Dude, no shit?"

Katsuki stares at him. "Why the fuck would I lie about that." Shitty Hair was a complete idiot, apparently.

Eijirou waves him off. "No, no - it's just that I've got one of those, too. Right here." He traces a shaky flower on the fabric covering his thigh. "Weird coincidence, huh? I've also got a dragonfly, too, but it isn't in the same spot."

Katsuki blinks wordlessly, scowling, and decides he's done with the conversation. "Yeah, what the fuck ever. Tell me how this piece of shit works so I can go buy my damn equipment."

Eijirou blinks. "Oh, right. I don't really know the specifics, man, sorry. I kind of..._borrowed_ them from one of my old military buddies. But the general idea is that they pick up the vibrations from your jaw when you speak. Pretty cool, right?"

Katsuki shrugs. "Whatever." It is pretty fucking cool, but no one will ever catch him saying that out loud. "I'm leaving."

He turns to go, and _immediately _something fucking _nails_ him in the back of the head. Katsuki whirls around furiously, fast enough to catch whatever the fuck hit him.

...It's a key.

There's a faux-innocent grin on Deku's face as he says, "Don't forget your key, Kacchan!"

Katsuki counts to twenty _slowly_, then sighs aggrievedly. "Yeah, yeah," he mutters, waving a hand over his shoulder as he leaves.

It turns out to be a good thing that Katsuki had been given a damn earbud, because Deku had _not_ been very fucking descriptive of their mark in the way that was necessary for Katsuki to be able to create a fucking persona for this job.

Katsuki taps the earbud, then winces at its shriek of protest. It's a fucking terrible sound, but at least it's attention-grabbing. "Hey, nerd, how straight is this fucker?"

There's a beat of silence, then Deku answers: "Shouto just checked his internet browser history and he looks like he wants to take a shower to wash away the hetero."

Good, Katsuki's gaydar is fucking _flawless. _On both counts."So, pretty fucking straight."

"Pretty fucking straight, Kacchan," Deku agrees amiably. It's way fucking easier to deal with him when Katsuki doesn't have to deal with his stupid fucking face. Katsuki can still hear the strains of _you are my sunshine, my only sunshine,_ but it's faint enough that he can ignore it.

Katsuki surveys the rack of clothing in front of him critically. He sighs. "This is bullshit."

"Yeah, pretty much. Sorry, Kacchan. He already knows Tsuyu's face, and I need her for something else anyway."

"I tend to stab people if I go undercover, _kero_," Tsuyu adds, like that's a normal fucking thing to say.

"What the fuck ever. I wouldn't be a damn good grifter if I couldn't convince someone I'm a woman," Katsuki says, completely ignoring the frog fucker's statement.

"I mean, you could always just try to charm him? You seem like a pretty charming guy," chimes in Eijirou.

What.

Him, his natural personality, charming?

The fuck?

Katsuki shakes his head absently, moving towards the exit. He's not going to be able to find dick squat here, so he needs to fucking move on. "Nah, it'll be way fucking easier to just go femme for this job. He'll end up falling all over me and pay even less attention to all the shit we don't want him paying attention to. It'll be, what, a couple days, tops?"

"Two days, maybe three. In any case, we'll be done on Friday at the latest," croaks frog girl - Tsuyu, or something.

"You're sure you're fine with this?" Eijirou persists. It's slightly endearing, but it's mostly just pissing him off. Who the fuck is he to decide that Katsuki can't play a female character?

Katsuki shrugs sharply, stalking down the street and glancing at the shop windows to see if they have what he needs. "I've done it before. There are only three other fuckers in my office, and sometimes Uraraka and Utsushimi aren't available so I'm their next fucking option. Besides, it's been a while since I've grifted like this. Wouldn't want to fucking fall out of practice or some shit."

There's a beat of silence, then Eijirou says quietly, "Sorry, I forgot that most people don't have to deal with dysphoria."

(He can distantly hear Tsuyu saying, "Dysphoria sucks," in commiseration.)

Most of the fight drops from Katsuki abruptly, the tension in his shoulders dissipating. Shit, he never knows what to say in these situations. He mutters, "Don't worry about it," and hopes that's enough.

Fuck, he's never regretted being insulting before.

.

.

.

Katsuki returns to the safe house almost six hours later, laden with shopping bags. It had taken _way too fucking long_ to find everything he needed, which was kind of understandable since he didn't actually know where people in fucking Massachusetts went to get supplies for drag, and then he'd spent another incredibly shitty hour making absolutely sure that no one followed him back.

As soon as the door opens, he takes the bag that holds the things Izuku had asked him for and fucking _throws_ it straight at his head.

The annoying little fucker had the nerve to catch the bag without even turning his head. He mutters something to Shouto before rifling through the bag - what, like Katsuki hadn't got everything on his damn list?

Katsuki counts to ten.

He can do this.

He can be in a room with Deku for a couple more minutes without anything exploding.

He _can._

.

.

.

Izuku grins at Kacchan, who's just announced his return by chucking a small plastic bag full of supplies at him. Thanks to the way the television is angled, he doesn't even need to turn around to catch it. "That is _so_ _cool_," he whispers to Shouto, before turning and waving at Kacchan.

"Welcome home, Kacchan, and thanks for the stuff."

If looks could kill, Izuku would be _so fucking dead._

But they can't, so Izuku's grin widens just a little bit when Kacchan starts fuming.

He shouldn't bait Kacchan so much. It's fun, but he really shouldn't do it. It's not great for Kacchan's blood pressure.

So instead, he pretends he's a responsible adult. "So, if we're all clear on the plan, I think it's time that we divvy up the rooms for the night. Kacchan's already claimed one room, and this one, of course, is Shouto's, but - "

"I prefer the vents." Tsuyu says, then hops onto a chair and removes the grate covering the air vents. She picks up one of the futons and shoves it through, then climbs up after it.

Eijirou and Shouto stare after her.

Izuku's pretty sure that she's actually going to go call her family, not that she's told anyone they exist - least of all him. It's just - she doesn't work for the month surrounding Christmas, and always takes off five weeks at various times every year. They're really strange times and seem random at first glance, but there's always an overlap of at least five of the exact same days every single year, even when she was just starting out, which suggests an anniversary of some sort. And, honestly, birthdays are the least morbid thing he can come up with, so he's going with that.

Izuku's glad he'd asked Kacchan to get an extra burner phone earlier, and that he'd taken the opportunity to carefully slip it into one of the pockets of Tsuyu's jumpsuit.

"...Okay," says Eijirou finally. "So I guess that means there's two rooms to divide between the three of us? I don't mind sharing."

Izuku shakes his head, then reconsiders and nods. "Yes, but probably not the two you're thinking."

Shouto quirks an eyebrow, the rest of his face eerily still. Eijirou frowns, trying to figure out what he's missed.

Izuku hesitates. He doesn't want to accidentally out Tsuyu on her family's existence, so instead he says, "She won't be able to roll out the futon inside the vent. It's too narrow, and she'll get stiff. I'm pretty sure she'll figure that out pretty soon, and she'll want to be alone after today, so I think we should leave the room Kacchan hasn't claimed for her."

Kacchan snorts. "Which leaves you three fuckers in this room? You'll be about as useful as a pile of shit tomorrow if that happens. Shitty Hair can stay with me." He tilts his chin towards Eijirou, almost challengingly, then storms off into the next room.

Eijirou blinks rapidly. "Well, okay then." He grabs the other futon from beneath Shouto's bed and scurries off after Kacchan.

Izuku...is comfortable admitting that he is completely baffled by this turn of events. Kacchan, sharing a room? With an almost-stranger, no less? And actively _offering?_

Had they stepped into the Twilight Zone or something?

.

.

.

Tsuyu pushes the futon in front of her as she crawls through the vents, looking for a comfortable spot to curl up in. She immediately realizes that the vents are smaller than she'd expected them to be, which is annoying. She might actually have a concussion after all if she can't get her estimates right with only a few millimeters error.

As soon as she reaches a junction, she spreads out the futon as best she can and pulls out the phone Izuku-chan had slipped into her pocket earlier.

(Of course she had noticed. Tsuyu's first introduction to the world of crime had been pick-pocketing.)

She's hoping that Izuku-chan doesn't know _why_ she wants to make a call - or, rather, to whom - but that's kind of a pipedream. Izuku-chan is pretty smart - he's almost managed to _catch_ her before, to say nothing of the times that he'd actively prevented her from stealing something or the times when she saw that he was acting as security for something his company insured and decided to bail on the job.

And, also, Tsuyu's never really been great at being subtle - which seems like an oxymoron, since her whole job is being a thief.

She can be sneaky, sure. She can creep through air ducts and get in and out of secure facilities without anyone noticing until it's too late. She can do pretty much anything that doesn't involve too much human interaction.

But Tsuyu works alone for a reason.

She isn't a great liar, and the one time she tries grifting she ended up stabbing someone with a fork. She doesn't really have the necessary skills to hide her true self away like Shouto-chan sometimes does - she says what she means, and she means what she says. Her body language, too, she's sure.

So it wouldn't exactly be surprising that Izuku-chan knows she's about to call her family.

She kind of wishes he didn't, though, because who knows what he's going to do after this job? He...probably isn't going back to insurance investigating, not after what happened to his mentor. But that doesn't mean that they won't be on opposite sides again after this.

Tsuyu gets comfortable on the futon and slips the phone from her pocket, dialing a number from memory. If she's lucky, she'll be able to catch them before her siblings leave for school.

Her mother is the one who picks up. _"Oh, Tsuyu, darling, I wasn't expecting to hear from you today! How are you?"_

Tsuyu feels a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and she allows it to spread. "I'm good," she replies, in her native language. "I had a difficult climb this morning, but I met some nice people, so it all worked out."

Her family thinks that she's a hybrid stuntwoman/climbing instructor for rich people. They're not entirely _wrong_ about that. She does indeed teach people how to rock-climb, occasionally - you'd be surprised at how many people with lots of...disposable income want to learn how to be 'adventurous.' She prefers teaching their kids, honestly. Tsuyu's good with kids. She volunteers at rec centers, sometimes, if she doesn't have a job planned. Or, sometimes, _because_ she has a job planned and the rec center just happens to overlook the site…

"_Oh, honey, that's fantastic! I'm so glad you're making friends - Ganma, dear! Say hello to Tsuyu before you leave for work!"_

"_Hello, Tsuyu. Hope you're eating well."_

"_Oh, yes - and you're keeping up with your injections?"_

Tsuyu rolls her eyes, still grinning. Her father is a man of few words, but he cares so much that it's evident in every single one of them. Her mother, on the other hand, can be a bit nosey, and she'll never use one word when three will do. She's also where Tsuyu inherited her bluntness. "Yes, mother, I am. Did you get the last check I sent you?"

"_Oh, of course we did - Tsuyu, dear, you _know_ that you don't have to keep sending us money. We'd be perfectly fine on our own."_

Tsuyu sighs. They always bring this up - it's practically obligatory at this point. "This barely puts a dent in my earnings, mother, you know that," Tsuyu says, and it's the truth. She may have started stealing because her family had been in a tight situation, financially, but that isn't really the case anymore. It certainly helps that she's living away from home and can buy her own estrogen injections now - ten years ago, she couldn't have managed that, and her family had barely been scraping by. Two parents, only one of them working full time, and three kids, one of whom was trans with intense dysphoria and one of whom was severely allergic to almost everything under the sun? Money had always been tight.

So, maybe she had started picking the pockets of the rich kids at school - the kids who wouldn't miss a couple dollars every couple days - so she could buy snacks for her siblings, presents for their birthdays, things like that.

That had escalated to cars, when she got older and happened to come across the local chop shop - not that she'd known what a chop shop actually was before she'd stumbled upon it, trying to find a gift for her parents' anniversary.

Then there was the time that her younger brother, Sami-chan, had left the notebook he'd needed for a project that was a quarter of his final grade. Of course she went back to the school to pick it up - she'd been the only one who was old enough to go out alone at night. The school had been locked by the time she'd got there, and that was how she learned to pick locks. It was a useful skill, that.

Then the night janitor had showed up and her general dislike of human beings plus her ingrained panic over potentially being caught had caused her to hide herself in the vents and crawl her way through air ducts in the school until she got to an exit.

Which had also come in handy in her current line of work.

_"Oh, Tsuyu, dear…"_

"Really, mother, don't worry about me. Are Sami-chan and Sacchan there, or have they left for school already?"

_"Oh - yes, of course! Samidare, honey, will you say hello to your sister?"_

_"Hi, nee-chan! How's Peru?"_

Tsuyu's smile widens. "I'm not in Peru anymore, Sami-chan. I have some pictures to send you, though. I'll do that as soon as I have a stable internet connection."

_"Yeah, are you on a plane now? I thought you sounded a little tinny - hey, Satsuki - stop it - !"_

_"Nee-chan's pictures are the best!" _Sacchan chimes in. She's probably grabbed the phone from Sami-chan. She has a tendency to do that; it's pretty annoying when Tsuyu's the one she's stealing it from, but right now it just makes her nostalgic. Maybe a little homesick.

Tsuyu laughs quietly. "Thanks, Sacchan."

"_Hey, hey, nee-chan! When are you coming home?" _Sacchan asks innocently.

"_Dumbass Satsuki, you know that Tsu-nee always comes back for our birthdays!"_ Sami-chan's been swearing more since he started his last year of high school - it's like he thinks it makes him sound more mature. She'll have to talk to him about that, otherwise he might turn out sounding like Bakugou-chan. That wouldn't be ideal.

Luckily, Sacchan gives as good as she gets. "_Dummy Sami-nii, her birthday isn't until February! I want to know if she's coming back before then, you big idiot."_

Tsuyu can hear her mother's voice chiding them in the background, and the silence abruptly becomes much more contrite. She stifles a laugh before replying: "I'll try to go home for Christmas, Sacchan, Sami-chan. You'll just have to wait until then."

She's actually planning to surprise them next month, but she doesn't want to get their hopes up in case something goes wrong and she can't make it.

She's about to drop a few hints, but then -

"_**Because of my father. Because I used to look like him, on my left side." **_

\- reverberates through the air ducts and Tsuyu abruptly loses her train of thought.

This is…

"_**Before my mother poured boiling water over my face."**_

...not something she should be listening to.

"Sorry, I need to go," Tsuyu says, crawling through the vents towards the room Bakugou-chan hadn't claimed earlier, in the hope that whoever ended up in there wouldn't mind her company until whatever - clearly private - conversation is over. The walls should be thick enough to block most of the sound from Shouto-chan's room.

"_Is your plane taking off?"_

"Something like that," Tsuyu says non-committedly, giving up on the futon in favor of speed, because the conversation she was trying not to overhear was getting very heavy very quickly. "I really do need to hang up, sorry. Good bye, everyone."

"_Bye, nee-chan!"_

"_Bye, Tsu-nee!"_

"_Oh - good-bye, Tsuyu, love!"_

Tsuyu hangs up, slipping the phone back into her pocket. She unscrews the grate covering the air duct, then drops through the opening onto the bed.

Tsuyu tenses, waiting for someone to ask her what she's doing, but...no one does that.

She glances around the room, feeling her shoulders relax as she surveys it in all its emptiness.

Tsuyu feels her lips twitching upward and allows the grin to overtake her normally stoic face.

This has Midoriya Izuku written all over it.

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.

.

Katsuki is setting out the things he'd bought on the bed, double-checking that he has everything he needs for the character he'll be wearing the next day when Eijirou knocks on the door frame.

"Come in," he mutters distractedly, trying to slot the pieces of the damn persona into place.

He's decided her name is going to be Sera Katsumi. It's easy enough for these American fuckers to pronounce without making him want to blow off his damn ears, and it has the added bonus of having a last name that sounds like an English first, which satisfies both cultural norms for politeness. There's also the benefit that if fucking _Deku_ forgets himself and calls him 'Kacchan' in the middle of a job - like he had that one fucking time back when they'd still been working for the same shitty company and Deku had nearly blown the entire damn thing - it still sounds like a reasonable nickname.

But before Katsuki can finish putting Sera Katsumi together, there's something that needs to happen first.

"S-orry," he says stiltedly, forcing his mouth to form the damn word - it isn't something he's exactly fucking used to saying and unfortunately it's pretty fucking obvious. "About earlier. I can - be an ass. Sometimes."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eijirou's split second of shock as it crosses his face before he forces his expression into a weak grin. "Don't worry about it. It's not your fault I'm a little - broken."

And that. That. Fucking - the way he says the word 'broken'? It brings up flashbacks from back when he was trying to - fucking come to terms with his sexuality. And since Aizawa had been a damn good therapist, Katsuki only has one automatic response to that kind of thing: "Like fuck you're broken."

Katsuki can feel his ears turning pink - it had just kind of...burst out of him, okay, he's not to be held responsible for his fucking kneejerk reactions - and consequently he resolutely refuses to look at Eijirou, instead focusing on the stuff he has spread out on the bed.

"...Thanks, Bakugou."

"Katsuki," he says, because he may as well go all the fucking way at this point. Why the fuck not. They're all calling each other by their first names anyway. It was only a matter of fucking time.

"...Katsuki, then." His voice is curiously blank and Katsuki is still very determinedly _not_ looking at him because he's pretty fucking cognizant of the fact that his ears are probably bright fucking red. It's times like this that he hates being albino.

The ensuing awkward silence makes Katsuki pretty damn sure that he'd fucked something up _again_ because that's what he _does_. He fucks things up. It's practically his default setting.

Katsuki goes into the ensuite bathroom to avoid the awkwardness, and also because his eyes are starting to fucking itch. It's pretty damn uncomfortable - it's not like he can just reach in and scratch them. That'd fuck up his vision even worse.

So instead he takes his time taking out his shaded contacts, blinking at the harsh lights beating down on him in the bathroom. He scowls - his eyes are sensitive to light, but not _quite _fucking sensitive enough to justify calling it photophobia. Either way, it's a bitch.

He switches out the contacts for his glasses, and when he catches sight of his reflection in the mirror, his scowl deepens.

"_Demon eyes_." It's the same voice he hears whenever he looks in the fucking mirror.

Fucking -

Ugh.

He doesn't want to fucking deal with that bitch now.

He exits the bathroom, and Eijirou turns to face him. He's apparently decided that wandering over to the bed is a fantastic fucking idea and that he's entitled to rifling through Katsuki's fucking equipment. He brandishes something in Katsuki's direction, a quizzical look on his face, because apparently they're just going to fucking pretend that none of that just happened. And that he's not wearing his fucking ugly-ass glasses.

Which is…kind of nice, actually.

What the fuck.

"What's this?" Eijirou asks, brandishing - something.

Katsuki glances at the thing he's holding and almost fucking chokes. _Of course_ that's the thing he fucking chose to pick up.

"That's where my dick goes when I'm cross-dressing," he says bluntly.

"Oh." Eijirou quickly puts it down again, but continues looking at it curiously. "What's it called?"

"It's a gaff." Why the fuck is there a buzzing in his ears? Damn it, he must be more tired than he'd thought.

"...How does it work?"

Shit, this fucker's pretty damn curious, isn't he. "I ain't giving you a demonstration," Katsuki warns, and he's not fucking - _uncomfortable_, because that's for weaklings, but he's -

Wait, no. Aizawa had been fucking working with him on this. 'Uncomfortable' isn't for weaklings. It's - _okay_ to admit it to himself.

(That doesn't mean he's fucking going to.)

"No, no!" Eijirou looks panicked, and Katsuki relaxes a little. "That's not what I - I mean, I'm curious, sure, but that's not something I'm about to _ask_ \- No, I meant the whole - " He gestures at the array on the bed. " - the whole...persona. Thing. That."

Oh. Okay. Yeah, he can fucking answer that one.

Katsuki walks over to the bed and surveys his equipment, wondering where he should fucking start. Eventually, he decides on the pack of disposable razors, picks them up, and tosses them at Eijirou, who doesn't even have the fucking decency to fumble the catch.

"The first thing _I _do is shave. Other fuckers start other places, but I prefer getting my body ready before deciding on a persona."

Eijirou furrows his brow, looking at the razors. "But you don't have a beard?"

Katsuki snorts. "Yeah, 'cause I don't want to look like fucking Santa Claus. And not that kind of shaving - legs, chest, underarms, that sort of shit. If I had dark hair like Deku I'd probably have to do some fucking work on my arms, too - bleach and trim it, the whole fucking package. I've heard it's a bitch and a half to do, but I don't have to fucking worry about it." He reconsiders. "Mm, might have to do my stomach, depending on the clothes. We'll fucking see, I guess."

Eijirou chokes and Katsuki wonders what his fucking problem is. He gestures to keep going, though, so Katsuki does. "I obviously can't do any necklines that plunge half the way to fucking China, or anything that shows all that much in the way of cleavage, since I don't exactly have tits." He gestures to the front of his tank top, where there are very clearly not any fucking breasts. He's been working on his pecs recently, though, so they're jutting out enough to shallowly fill maybe an A-cup or some shit. Bra sizes are fucking weird. But anyway, that means less contouring that he'll have to do later, so that's pretty fucking great. "Which is why it's good that, according to Deku's fucking plan, my persona's going to be dressed for business - less expectancy for tits to be seconds away from falling out a damn dress."

Eijirou nods slowly, trying to process the information Katsuki's fucking throwing at him. Katsuki waits for comprehension to dawn before continuing.

"Deku's fucking lucky I had a bodysuit stashed in my travel bag, because there's no fucking way I would be able to get a halfway decent one on such short notice." Katsuki gestures at his bodysuit, which currently is spread out on the pillow, devoid of padding. To Eijirou, it probably looks like some sort of fucking spandex, which - isn't entirely inaccurate, actually. "There's padding and shit that goes in the hips and ass," he adds when Eijirou still looks confused. "It helps create the fucking illusion of curves." Which apparently people find fucking...sexy, or some shit? Katsuki sure as fuck doesn't get it, but whatever.

Eijirou parts his mouth in a little silent 'oh.' Katsuki finds himself staring at his teeth because, shit, he could kill a man with those fuckers.

He shakes his head a little, wiping that train of thought from his mind like an Etch-a-Sketch. "Then I'll have to figure out what fucking bra size looks the best, and the gaff and all that shit - it's a fucking pain in the ass to put on - and then _hopefully_ by that fucking time I'll have decided on a personality for the persona, which means I can pick out clothing."

"You...need the persona before you can pick out the clothing?" Eijirou asks hesitantly.

"Yeah," Katsuki says, consciously biting back the _'fucking obviously'_ he wants to follow with. Wow, look at that, he can refrain from making a complete fucking ass of himself. Aizawa would be _so _proud. "It's - like, if I decide I'm going to be a fucking...newly widowed woman, I'm going to be dressing differently than if I were a bubbly girl fresh out of college, understand? It also gives me a fucking idea of what to do with my hair - " He gestures at his short, spiky hair. " - because basically the only types of women who wear it this short are lesbians and soccer moms, neither of which I want to fucking emulate. Usually. Sometimes he needs the _'let me talk to your manager' _look. It can be pretty fucking helpful. "And then what I do with my hair and clothes also influences what I do with my fucking makeup." He waves a hand towards the foot of the bed, where a truly _monsterous_ amount of fucking makeup is spread out. It takes up a third of the bed, easily. In this case, it's a good thing he's so fucking pale, because otherwise he'd never have been able to find a decent foundation in the U.S.

"What do you do with the makeup? Like, do you put it on the same way a girl would?"

Katsuki shakes his head - oddly, not impatiently. If it were Deku asking these fucking questions, he probably would've stormed off by now. Fuck Deku. "I've got to go heavier on the contouring - soften my jawline, shape my eyebrows, emphasize my eyes and lips, that sort of shit. It's a fucking pain in the ass, but the effect is worth it."

"And that's...everything?" Eijirou's looking pretty fucking overwhelmed.

Katsuki shrugs, yawning. The damn buzzing in his hears still hasn't fucking abated yet. "I'll probably have to fucking do something about my nails and Adam's apple, and probably some shit I'm forgetting right now because of the jet lag, but pretty fucking much, yeah."

He's a little apprehensive about that stupid fucking part, actually. The typical approach to covering an Adam's apple would involve a choker or some shit, but that's never fucking happening, so he's going to have to come up with something else. He might just have to do _more_ fucking contouring and hope for the best.

Katsuki puts the clothes he's bought onto hangers and hangs them anywhere he can around the room because there's no fucking closet, then shoves everything except the makeup back into his shopping bags. The makeup he moves carefully to the coffee table in front of the TV, because it would be a bitch and a half if it broke. Then, he plucks the razors from Eijirou's hands and goes off to start shaving, shutting the door firmly behind him. He fucking hopes that Shouto has a decent fucking water heater, because this is going to take a long damn while.

Moments after he steps into the shower, he realizes something.

He forgot to bring in a fucking towel.

Fuck.

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.

Shouto doesn't really understand what's happening, or why Izuku is gaping after his soulmate - oh. Of course. It _is_ a little weird that your soulmate would choose sharing a room with someone else over you. But, then again, he's pretty sure that people need their space. At least, that's what Touya had told him when Fuyumi shut herself in her room for an hour.

Then again, it could also just be that Izuku's surprised Bakugou was the one to volunteer to share a room. From what Shouto's seen of him, he really doesn't seem the type. But, on the other hand, Shouto had interacted with him for maybe a total of two hours, tops. And it wasn't like he was exactly an expert on people. So he probably didn't have a good enough idea of Bakugou as a person to make those sorts of judgements anyway.

Shouto lets his eyes travel around the room. There isn't really much to look at, but his eyes land on the space beneath his bed. Oh. Right. "There's only one bed," he observes.

Izuku startles out of his reverie. "Sorry, what?" he asks.

"There's only one bed," Shouto repeats, pointing rather unnecessarily at the bed and the lack of futons beneath it. "Tsuyu and Eijirou took the futons, so now we have one bed."

Izuku waves his hands in the air frantically. "I-it's okay. I don't mind sleeping on the couch!"

Shouto frowns. "You're not going to sleep on the couch."

Izuku looks at him, poleaxed. The weird buzzing sound is back in Shouto's ears, but he ignores it. There must be a fly in the room somewhere.

"You're the mastermind behind our operation," Shouto elaborates, when the pause stretches long enough that he figures Izuku opening and closing his mouth wordlessly is a request for an explanation. "We can't have you too tired to function tomorrow."

Izuku's jaw drops. "B-but I can't take your bed! You're our hacker - you can't be stiff tomorrow!"

Shouto concedes this point, but only mentally. Besides, it's not like the couch is hell to sleep on - there are some nights when he can't force himself to sleep in his bed, so it only makes sense that he made sure his other furniture is comfortable enough for a good night's sleep. "You're the guest," he argues placidly. He's pretty sure Fuyumi would actually murder him if he let a guest sleep on his couch. That's one of the rules for house guests, right?

Izuku flails some more, making wild gestures that don't seem to mean anything. "B-but I can't put you out of your own bed! My mother would never forgive me!"

Ah. They're at an etiquette impasse.

Shouto has no fucking clue how to resolve this.

...No, wait.

"If you sleep on the couch, I'll sleep on the floor," he says politely.

Izuku lets out a tiny screech and covers his face with his hands. "If you do that, then I'll _also_ sleep on the floor!"

They've returned to the impasse.

They stay there, arguing back and forth with increasing politeness, until Shouto glances back at the bed in question and almost face-palms at the simplicity of the solution.

"Why don't we share the bed? Then neither of us have to sleep on the couch. It's big enough to hold us both." Shouto doesn't understand why Izuku's face is growing increasingly more flushed. The heater must have kicked in or something. He needs to check the thermostat before they go to bed.

...Does this room even _have_ a thermostat? Shouto hasn't been in this place since he bought it when he was, like, twelve. It wasn't the first place he'd bought, because that one had always been memorable to him, since it was the first place he could call his own. Unfortunately, he'd used his sperm donor's credit card, so he'd been easily tracked down. He'd been smarter after that. This must have been the...third or fourth place he'd bought, probably, which explained why he'd almost forgotten he owned the whole floor.

(It was one of the places he'd bought when he'd still entertained the hope that he could live together with the rest of his family, far, far away from the sperm donor. Those hopes had been pretty thoroughly crushed by the tenth property.)

" - Shouto?" Oh. Apparently Izuku had been trying to get his attention for a while now.

Shouto shook his head. "Sorry, I was thinking about my shitty old man. What were you saying?"

...It belatedly occurs to him that that is not, in fact, a typical conversational topic when talking to someone you've met face-to-face a total of maybe three times. He sincerely hopes that Izuku ignores it and moves on. Because, well. Otherwise Shouto might tell him.

Izuku blinks slowly. "I...was just saying that I - I guess we can share the bed. Um, it kind of sounds like you have a lot on your mind," he says carefully.

"You could say that," Shouto says wryly, not sure whether or not he wants Izuku to continue that line of questioning.

Izuku studies his expression closely. Good. Maybe _he_ can find out whether or not Shouto actually wants to tell him anything, because Shouto sure as hell doesn't know. "...If you want to talk about it, I'm here," he says finally.

There's barely a pause before the words spill out of Shouto. "I bleach my hair," he blurts involuntarily.

Izuku blinks twice. "I - yes, I had guessed that, actually…"

"Because of my father. Because I used to look like him, on my left side. Before my mother poured boiling water over my face." Once the words start spilling out of him, Shouto isn't sure he can stop them. He's not sure if he wants to. Izuku is the first person he's told outside of his family, and he isn't really sure how to feel about it. "It wasn't her fault," he adds. "My shitty old man was emotionally abusive towards her, and probably physically too when I wasn't around to see it. He - my name's Todoroki Shouto, did you know?"

Izuku's mouth drops open and he shakes his head wordlessly, brow furrowed like he's piecing things together in his head.

Todoroki is a pretty famous name in Japan.

Shouto spares him the trouble. "Good - I went to great lengths to separate myself from him. Do you know why he chose to marry my mother, even though he was a five-star general, a national hero, and she wasn't even in the military? It's because she was the best coder in Japan, and he wanted to enhance his _bloodline,_" Shouto says, voice brimming with disgust. It's probably the most emotion he's heard in his own voice in years. That's just a little bit sad. "I'm still not sure how he managed to get her family to agree to marry her off, but I have a feeling that there was a lot of money involved. Whenever I see her in my memories, she's always crying…"

Shouto takes a deep breath, then continues: "I have three siblings, you know. Two brothers and a sister. He started training each of us when we turned three, turning us into child soldiers who could create their own AIs by the time we were ten. We were all born four years apart. The math makes it pretty obvious that we were given a year to become some - _perfect tool_ and if we failed, mother would have another child. I don't know why he stopped, after me - maybe because my left side looked like him and my right side looked like mother, maybe he thought he'd finally found the right mix of techie and soldier - but he did. And then, when I was five, my mother poured boiling water over my left side." There's a sharp intake of breath from Izuku.

Shouto's hand hovers over his eyepatch, considering removing it. But he's already feeling bare and there's still more to the story, so he ultimately decides not to. "I lost most of the vision in my left eye, and obviously I still have the scar. When I woke up in the hospital, my shitty old man was there, saying that he'd 'submitted her to a mental hospital since she was a danger to us' - those were his exact words, like he hadn't been spending the last year beating me within an inch of my life under the guise of training.

"Touya, though, he was the oldest - he had it the worst. Mother's side of the family was prone to brittle bones, and he inherited the disease. My shitty old man as good as tossed him away when he realized Touya could never be the 'perfect soldier' he wanted. Fuyumi, he brushed off because she was a girl, but after he sent mother away he made her teach me coding. Natsuo had the same illness as Touya and had ADHD on top of that, so my shitty old man couldn't get him to sit still long enough to learn how to code and gave up on him.

"Touya tried to take care of us all. He must have been - what, sixteen, maybe seventeen when mother was sent away. He was the only one of us who had any free time _and_ could reach the stove, so he ended up being the one who took care of the household chores, since my shitty old man sure wasn't going to make sure we were fed and cleaned and clothed. One day, a couple days before Touya turned eighteen and could get away from that hell, he was cooking at the stove when my shitty old man came home early. He was so furious that Touya was letting us do something that wasn't training - we were just helping him wash the vegetables - that he pushed Touya into the stove."

Shouto pauses to take a deep breath, his voice hoarse. "I - I can still remember what his flesh burning smelled like. What his screams sounded like. Fuyumi tried to herd the Natsuo and me away, but I still…" He shakes his head. "We never saw him again, not even when he was in the hospital. And that's when we realized that we needed to get out of that house.

"Fuyumi and I opened a Swiss bank account and started siphoning money from his account into it. I'm - I don't think he ever noticed the money, but he definitely noticed when Natsuo swiped his credit card and we bought an apartment - it was probably only when we left that he did. He tracked us down pretty quickly, but since Natsuo and Fuyumi had gone out shopping, I was the only one there, so I was the only one he could take back. He kept security much tighter after that. It took me two years to get out of there, and I've been running...pretty much ever since. I visit my mother every now and again, and I have dinner with Fuyumi and Natsuo occasionally. It's...nice."

Shouto coughs a little, awkwardly, when he realizes he's run out of words. He turns away from Izuku, so he doesn't have to see his expression, fumbling for a glass of water to soothe his parched throat.

(He tells himself that it doesn't matter if Izuku believes him. It _doesn't_.)

"...Is that why you don't like using your military skills?" comes Izuku's hesitant voice from behind him.

Shouto almost drops the glass, because he hadn't expected anyone to notice - for anyone to actually _believe _him. "I - yes, it is. Originally, I had intended to never use anything he'd taught me, but then he caught up to me again when I was eleven and I thought I was safe and - well, I realized that using what he taught me would keep me away from him."

"I'm glad." There's steel in Izuku's voice now, and Shouto almost drops his glass again. He sets it carefully on the counter beside the sink for safe-keeping and trepidatiously turns to face Izuku.

"I'm glad," Izuku repeats, fire in his eyes. "I'm glad that you got away from him, and I'm glad that you've found your family again, and I'm glad that you turned his skills into _yours _and used them against him. I'm sorry that it happened to you, because you sure as _fuck_ did not deserve it, but I am _glad_ that you made it here."

Shouto's knees almost buckle, and he has to hold onto the counter behind him to keep himself standing. Because...that's...a lot. He'd hardly expected Izuku to believe him at all, but this unyielding determination and support, it's...overwhelming.

He feels something prickling at the corners of his eyes and spins around to face the sink, watching in distant fascination as what are probably the first tears he's cried since he was five hit the steel sink basin and run down the drain. They're not...they're not _sad_ tears - he thinks he can still remember how those feel - and he's positive they aren't happy. It's just...cathartic. That's the word.

He hears Izuku approaching him, hears him making sure to step so that he makes noise even though he's just in his socks. He stops behind him, off to the side just a little bit so that Shouto can see him in the corner of his good eye.

"Would you like a hug?" Izuku asks quietly.

Shouto blinks. He's...pretty sure he's never been offered one before. Fuyumi wasn't excessively touchy - she took after their mother, preferring light, gossamer touches that might have been someone's imagination. Natsuo was the opposite - tactile, never missing an opportunity to fling himself at Shouto and climb up him like a monkey, still annoyed about the ten centimeters Shouto had on him. Touya...well, none of them really interacted much with each other in that house, so Shouto never got to find out. And the less said about their sperm donor, the better.

Shouto nods slowly, and almost immediately he can feel Izuku's arms circling his waist. He leans into a little bit, marvelling at the feeling. Izuku is strong, solid and warm, but gentle. He doesn't seem to mind the way that Shouto's getting his shoulder wet, and he doesn't make him turn to face him, or talk more, or anything - he just lets Shouto hide away in his shirt.

They stay there for a long time.

It's...nice.

Later, when they're lying next to each other in the bed, Izuku murmurs in his ear, "You know, if you ever want to take down your father, I'll be right there to help you," and Shouto realizes that Jirou is right.

He really is a disaster gay.

. . .

**Notes:**

this fucker is almost 20k

also it's my birthday so i'm bestowing this upon you early


	3. and i'll be your harmony

71

**Notes:**

TW FOR FOOD-RELATED ISSUES!

ALSO POISON AND ENDEVIL'S BAD PARENTING

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Izuku watches as Kacchan enters the Bettencourt Healthcare main office building through the security cameras Shouto has so helpfully brought up on the television screen while he taps away on his laptop. Izuku is perched behind him, kneeling on top of one of the wooden chairs he's stolen from the kitchen area with his arms resting, folded, on the back of the couch by Shouto's head. He wonders what kind of shampoo he uses, because it smells _really_ good. Like...mint, maybe?

(They'd woken up wrapped in each others arms that morning, which had been...really nice, actually. Izuku hasn't cuddled platonically with anyone in a long time.

They'd eaten breakfast together in comfortable silence, and it's kind of weird how _not _awkward it had felt.)

Izuku blinks, shaking his head to clear it, then burying his face in his arms and taking a deep breath when that doesn't work. He _cannot _afford to be distracted right now.

"Okay, Bakugou's appointment is in Petersen's calendar," Shouto says, his voice _a lot_ closer than Izuku was expecting it to be. He flails a little, flustered at the proximity, then steadies himself. Resting his chin back on his crossed arms so that he can look over Shouto's shoulder at his laptop screen and still see the security cameras, he says, "Good. Great. Um - "

(He thinks he sees Shouto blush out of the corner of his eye, but that's probably just a trick of the light.)

" - Right. Tsuyu, how are you doing?"

"Well, Izuku-chan," comes Tsuyu's flat voice through his earbud, tinny and echoing. "These vents haven't been cleaned in - I'd say, five and a half months."

Izuku winces. That can't be fun. Even for Tsuyu, who practically lives in vents.

"Otherwise," she continues, "I'm fine. I'll be in position in two minutes."

"Good, good," Izuku mutters absently, watching as Kacchan makes his way to the security desk. It's weird to see his hips swaying the way they are, since it's so different from his usual slouched stalking. The dress is also a strange sight, but less so since he'd been wearing it when he'd left Shouto's safe house.

"Eijirou, you're also ready?"

Izuku watches as Eijirou bumps into someone in the lobby accidentally-on-purpose, lifting the poor sod's ID badge as he apologizes. Eijirou attaches it to his shirt, then makes his way through security. "I'm good. Just waiting for the call."

Kacchan's voice breaks in, over the mics: "You have ten seconds to shut the fuck up before the job starts. I need some damn quiet." Izuku motions for Shouto to take Kacchan's earbud off the main circuit, leaving only a one-way connection. Izuku can hear Kacchan speaking - and whatever Petersen says, too, probably, if he gets close enough - but Kacchan can't hear him unless Izuku actively chooses to let him.

"Three, two, one - " Kacchan counts down under his breath, and then his entire personality shifts as he opens the door to Petersen's outer office.

It's Sera Katsumi who enters the office, greeting the secretary politely. "Hello, Miss Fissler," she says, reading the nametag on the secretary's desk. "I have a nine o'clock appointment with Mister Petersen…?" Sera has a slight accent - not enough to make her words unrecognizable, but enough to be noticeably foreign.

There's a flash of confusion as the secretary scrambles to recall whether or not Petersen has a meeting - there's a reason they're doing this in the morning, before she's had a chance to refresh her memory. She checks the office calendar, into which Shouto has helpfully entered an appointment for one Sera Katsumi. "Ah, yes, of course," Miss Fissler says, standing. "I'll just let him know you're here…"

Sera smiles politely. "Yes, of course."

(It's really weird to see Kacchan smiling, not smirking, and with no vindictive edge. But, then again, he's not really Kacchan right now, is he?)

Izuku glances over to the section of the screen showing the security feed from Petersen's office. Luckily, these ones also have sound, so he doesn't need to brush off his rather rusty lip-reading skills.

Miss Fissler knocks on the door frame before sticking her head into Petersen's office. "Mr. Petersen, your nine o'clock is waiting for you."

"My - ?" Petersen blinks rapidly, possibly a little alarmed by the bright floral pattern of his secretary's dress, then pulls out his phone to check his calendar. "Right, of course. Show them in, please, Miss Fissler."

She nods and ducks back out, only to reappear a moment later with Sera. She closes the door behind her when she exits the room, leaving Sera to step closer to the desk and offer Petersen a handshake. "Good morning, Mister Petersen," she says with a small, secretive smile. "My name is Sera Kastumi. I'm here on behalf of Liu International with a...business opportunity. I believe we might be able to do each other some good. And, of course, Mister…?"

His bodyguard stands behind Petersen silently, leaning against the wall faux-casually. He looks only vaguely interested in the proceedings.

Petersen waves off the question with a few frantic hand movements. "Don't worry about him - that's Dabi, my b-bodyguard." He shoots a quick glance at the newly named 'Dabi' who stares blankly back at him. "He doesn't speak much English, of course, but he's very good at his job."

Which immediately pings something in the back of Izuku's consciousness. Because that is...suspect, at best. It's more than likely something said to make Sera underestimate the bodyguard, but there's always the possibility that it's something else entirely.

Izuku _does not_ like not being certain about these things.

"Dabi," murmurs Sera. "That translates to 'Cremation.' An odd name for a bodyguard."

Izuku resists the urge to groan. By itself, it's a fairly innocent line, but with the way 'Sera' is looking at Dabi...

Izuku, double-taps his earbud, turning on his side of the line long enough to hiss, _"Do not seduce the bodyguard, Kacchan."_

Kacchan makes no sign that he heard Izuku, but Sera gives Dabi a once-over, then apparently decides that she prefers power over looks in her potential partners and her...focus hones back in on Petersen. Dabi - and that _cannot_ be his real name - doesn't seem to notice, but Petersen certainly does, preening in his chair. He coughs, trying to (badly) hide his smirk behind a raised hand. "Forgive me, Mrs - Sarah, was it?"

Sera smiles. "Just Sera, please."

"Sarah." Petersen returns the smile, though his is considerably more oily-looking. "You said - what was it, Liu something." His accent is absolutely horrendous, and Izuku is very proud of Kacchan for not flinching. He wonders if Petersen does it on purpose, because Bettencourt is an international company - there's _no reason_ for his accent to be _that_ bad. "Are you - you're government, aren't you."

"No, no. Liu International is a private business consortium, Mr. Petersen. We are looking to encourage infrastructure development and economic renewal in China."

"Right - of course, right there in the name. Apologies, Sarah. What is it, exactly, that you do? In English, preferably." Petersen laughs nervously.

Sera laughs lightly. "Oh, I do enjoy a man with a good sense of humor," she says, putting the slightest emphasis on the word _enjoy_ and giving him a _look_, heated and just this side of appropriate. Petersen shivers visibly, so much so that the security cameras in his office actually pick it up on the screen. Kacchan's really good at his job. "We create jobs and trade in China - and, of course, try to keep the stealing and corruption to a minimum. It's a tricky business, but I am - " She smiles, eyes promising something that Kacchan has no intentions of delivering. " - _very good_ at my job."

Petersen's almost certainly flushing, but he's facing away from the camera so Izuku can't tell for certain. He stutters a few times, trying to find words to start his sentence, but it's hard because Kacchan is doing that thing where he looks you up and down, eyes so heated you can almost _feel_ them caressing your skin - and of course Izuku knows how that feels; who else would Kacchan have practiced on? Ochako? Camie? He doesn't like women - hell, he doesn't even really like _people_. Izuku had been pretty much his only option, because he'd been the least likely to get weird about it.

(Honestly, that's not even the strangest thing he's done for Kacchan. There are so many contenders, but the time with the badger _might _take the cake. No, wait, the thing with the boulder and the stuffed pig. Or maybe - there are a _lot_ of options, okay. Nobody mentions this stuff when they talk about meeting your soulmate.)

Eventually, Petersen pulls himself together enough to say, "I'm s-sorry, Sarah, but I don't see how I can - how I could possibly help you with - with that?"

Izuku's pretty impressed that he managed something coherent. Kacchan can be...pretty overwhelming when he's like that.

Sera smiles, leaning forward for a moment so Petersen is afforded a glimpse down her shirt before she says, "Come, Mr. Petersen. Let us discuss this more in a more...private location," and walks, hips swaying perhaps a little more than necessary, towards the office door.

Petersen, the poor sod, is powerless to refuse. He tries, stuttering meaningless attempts at rejoinders, but he's already getting to his feet and following her. He waves at his bodyguard to stay put and Dabi ignores him, obviously, but follows at a reasonable distance.

"Okay, good, Kacchan," Izuku mutters under his breath as Sera leads Petersen out of his office - in the opposite direction of Eijirou, who's down the hall and around the corner, just out of sight. "Tsuyu, you're in position?"

"Yes, Izuku-chan." Tsuyu says it like she's indulging him.

Izuku pinks and coughs. "Sorry - it's just - you're the only one I can't see."

"Yes, vents don't tend to have security cameras," Tsuyu says dryly. "I'm ready, Izuku-chan."

Izuku glances sideways at Shouto, and breathes in sharply when he finds him a lot closer than he was expecting, for some reason. It's not like their positions have moved much, though. It's just that sometimes when he's directing people like this, Izuku has a tendency to kind of...zoom out from his body? He doesn't really notice what goes on around him because he's too focused on the plan.

(The buzzing sound is still echoing in the back of his head - he hopes that's not a sign of permanent brain damage from his concussion the other day.)

Izuku shakes his head slightly, clearing it. "Okay, Shouto, you're up."

Shouto blinks once, then glances at his laptop screen long enough to press the enter key twice.

The first hit of the key causes a small window to pop up in the corner of the television screen, this one connected to the secretary's computer screen.

"Perfect," Izuku breathes, focusing on the security camera feeds and ignoring Shouto's slight, barely noticeable twitch.

The second hit of the enter key comes a few keystrokes later and causes the secretary's computer screen to display the blue screen of death. The poor woman jumps to her feet and shakes the computer monitor, her mouth moving around the word _no _as she repeats it countless times in vain.

It won't help. Nothing will help.

Because technically there's nothing actually wrong with the computer. It's just that Shouto has control of the screen.

The secretary sits back down, posture brimming with resignation, then picks up the office phone and calls IT. Tsuyu, who's hijacked the phone line, is the one who picks up.

"Hello, you've reached IT."

The earbuds Eijirou acquired from his unnamed military buddy are so sensitive that they manage to pick up the other side of the conversation. "Hi, yes, this is Amanda Fissler, from Mr. Petersen's office? Something's wrong with my computer."

Izuku's impressed that she managed to say that so smoothly without having to prepare herself to make the phone call. People with interpersonal skills are pretty amazing.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Tsuyu asks flatly and Izuku and Shouto both nearly choke trying to stifle their laughter. Tsuyu very rarely tells jokes, but when she does, no one's expecting it, which somehow manages to make it ten times funnier than it should be.

"I - yes," says Miss Fissler, even though Izuku and Shouto can quite clearly see that she hasn't. To be fair, it wouldn't really apply in this situation anyway. "Please, could you just send someone up? I was in the middle of something important and then the blue screen of death happened, so - "

"Don't worry, Amanda," Tsuyu interrupts. "We have someone on your floor; he'll be there shortly."

Miss Fissler sighs in relief, slumping back against her chair. "Thank you very much."

"Of course. Have a nice day."

"Thank you - you too."

Izuku lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He's just glad Tsuyu's peculiar speech pattern hadn't made an appearance - _kero. _It's pretty easily identifiable. "Good - great job, Tsuyu. Eijirou, you're up."

Eijirou smiles brightly at the security camera in the hallway where he's been loitering before he turns the corner and heads for Petersen's office, where the secretary seems to be doing some deep breathing exercises. Which is understandable. She's probably freaking out about losing two, maybe three hours of work, if she doesn't save religiously.

"Why aren't I the one playing the computer guy?" Shouto asks absently, as if the thought has just occurred to him. Izuku doesn't answer right away, too busy watching the security camera footage.

Eijirou knocks on the frame of the open door, smiling with his mouth closed to hide his distinctive teeth. He's also got his colored contacts in, and his hair is tied in a low ponytail instead of spiked up. "Hey, are you the one who called IT?"

Miss Fissler blushes faintly. Probably because Eijirou's got the sleeves of his button-down rolled up to display his very well-muscled arms. "I - yes, I did. I'm Amanda."

She holds out her hand and Eijirou shakes it warmly. "I'm Eliot - nice to meet you. Now, what seems to be the problem?"

Izuku doesn't bother listening to Miss Fissler explaining the problem and somehow managing to be flirtatious about it, because he's a little busy with the reason Eijirou's distracting her. "Okay, Tsuyu. Now's good - she's facing the opposite direction."

"Okay, Izuku-chan." Tsuyu drops through the grate that leads to the vents and approaches Petersen's computer.

"Shouto, you're - "

" - already looping the videos, Izuku."

"Perfect." Shouto shivers slightly, again. It's barely noticeable, but maybe Izuku should volunteer to go turn up the thermostat? He's not exactly feeling cold - and it _is_ Shouto's safehouse, so shouldn't he have it set at the temperature he likes? - but...wait, he shouldn't be thinking about this right now. "Okay, Tsuyu, the drive?"

Tsuyu plugs in a flash drive into Petersen's computer, which _somehow _gives Shouto remote access to the files? Izuku has no idea how it works - he's not _really_ a computer guy. He can kind of fake his way through if necessary, but beyond that…

"This is why you're not playing the computer guy," Izuku mutters belatedly. "Because I need you to actually _be _the computer guy."

Shouto lets out a short little puff of air, shoulders twitching. It takes Izuku a few seconds to recognise the noise as a laugh - albeit a rusty one, like Shouto only half-remembers what laughs are supposed to sound like. Izuku directs a beaming smile in his direction anyway, because he just managed to _make Shouto laugh._

Shouto flushes slightly before he returns his focus to his screen, cheeks still lightly dusted pink as he types away.

"I'm in," he says, just as Tsuyu finishes placing a bug underneath Petersen's desk. "I'm - _wow._"

"What is it?" Izuku asks, leaning closer so he can look over Shouto's shoulder at the screen. It's a bunch of coding, scrolling too fast for Izuku to make sense of it, but Shouto doesn't seem to have that problem. "What am I looking at?"

Shouto doesn't answer, eye too busy scanning the code running across his screen. He types a few lines, faster than Izuku's eyes can track, then a vindictive expression spreads across his face. "We're good."

Izuku trusts him enough to say, "Okay, Tsuyu, Eijirou, get out of there."

Tsuyu nods wordlessly, swipes the drive and a fancy pen from the desk, then hops back into the vent and presumably starts making her way towards her exit point.

Eijirou laughs at something the receptionist is saying about his arms, flexing them for her amusement - Izuku's not entirely sure that he realizes she's trying to flirt with him - and winking at the camera behind her head to show that he's heard.

Outside, Kacchan - _Sera_ \- is still finishing up with Petersen. She's not just a distraction to get him out of his office so they can steal the plans, no.

Because that would just be getting back at him.

No, they want to get _even. _

(Perhaps...slightly more than even. They're thieves, and their pride has been damaged. Izuku's just there to...mitigate the collateral damage. Yeah.)

(And, you know. He also tried to kill them all. There's that, too.)

Petersen's bodyguard is standing beside the sliding doors of the main entrance to the building, smoking a cigarette under the scant amount of shade the awning affords him. He's a good twenty, maybe even thirty feet away from Petersen, which is - odd. Sera's an unknown. Dabi should probably be more concerned by the way she's insinuated herself with Petersen. She's close enough to stab him and melt away into the city before Dabi has a chance to notice.

Kacchan won't do that, though. Probably.

(...Probably.)

Anyway. Izuku's point is that that's kind of - _weird_ for a bodyguard, right? There's not much he can really do about it at this point, but, well. It's certainly something he's going to need to keep in mind for the next stage of the plan. He can't count on Dabi adhering to the way a bodyguard would normally act.

Sera's already masterfully manipulated Petersen into accepting a meeting with a few members of the group she represents, Liu International. (And _of course_ Kacchan chose _Liu_ as the company name. The character means 'kill' or 'destroy' and he's always had a mildly unhealthy obsession with things like that.) She's offered facilities that could be converted, a ready and cheap workforce, some smoothing of international relations, and a vast customer base. Petersen hadn't seemed particularly interested until she mentioned offhandedly that perhaps it would be better for her to go to Rockwell Prosthetics instead - they'd be a better fit.

Petersen had blustered, turning red in the face, then almost immediately accepted the meeting. Sera's in the process of setting it up for the next day, the day before Petersen's big company board meeting - the one where he's going to present 'his' research and probably earn himself a seat on the board - when Izuku tunes back in.

"Tomorrow, then? At the Center for International Business."

Petersen nods, dazed. He probably doesn't even know what hit him - Kacchan can be an...explosive force of nature, when he gets into character like this. "Tomorrow, yes, yes, of course, um - Sarah?"

Sera pauses, half-turned to leave. She glances over her shoulder and Izuku is about ninety percent sure that Petersen's eyes are glued to her ass for a few seconds too long. As expected, Kacchan was right to choose the pencil skirt. "Yes?"

Petersen blinks rapidly. "Um , I was just wondering - would you like to, uh, get some lunch, maybe?"

Sera contemplates the proposition for a moment, and Petersen starts looking hopeful. "No, I'm afraid I'm busy today - logistics things, you know how it is - " Petersen's face falls. " - but, perhaps tomorrow, after the meeting?"

Sera brushes her tongue over her lips, eyeing Petersen with clear interest. "We could do..._dinner_," she says suggestively, definitely implying some sort of sexual interaction, and Petersen makes a strangled noise. Then she walks off, hips swaying, leaving Petersen to stare at her back - well, perhaps a bit lower than her back.

Izuku frowns. Something seems a little - _off, _here. Kacchan might be getting a little _too_ into character, which...might have repercussions, later.

Because, see, the way Kacchan grifts is really interesting. Izuku had asked him about it once, a few years ago, on one of their 'good' days - one of the days that they could actually stand to be in the same room as each other without constantly picking fights.

(They didn't tend to have a lot of good days back then.)

Kacchan had been unusually keen to answer the question, and had even taken a few seconds to contemplate his answer.

Kacchan creates a character for every job. He decides their names, how they dress, how they act, how they talk, everything, before the job even starts. He'd said that he takes aspects of people that he knows reasonably well and then pieces them together into a whole new person, one that's wholly unrecognizable to anyone who knows him. Kacchan's strong personality actually helps with the whole 'hard to recognize' thing - who's going to expect someone who curses as much as he does, who acts like someone's pissed in his breakfast most of the time, to be able to pull off a demure forty-year-old woman?

The thing is, though - the part that Izuku was interested in was more along the lines of 'how would Kacchan be able to stay in character if something unexpected happened?'

Like, for example, Kacchan really, _really_ hates having things around his neck, even if they're too loose to constrict his airflow. Izuku's never asked why, because he can tell that it's a sensitive subject and would probably end up with him dying in a ditch somewhere if he ever actually _did_ manage to wheedle the truth out of Kacchan, but it is definitely _a thing._

...Except that while _Kacchan_ absolutely, positively, categorically _cannot_ stand having anything around his neck, not even a tie, he still somehow manages to play Sobhi Deveraux, a guy who _constantly wears a choker._

(Or possibly a collar. Izuku hadn't been brave enough to ask.)

Izuku had got his answer the next time they'd had a good day, maybe a few months later. They'd both been a little buzzed - it had been Ochako's birthday, and no one was allowed not to drink except for Tenya, the designated driver.

"It's like...a fffffffucking - box. Or some shit," Kacchan had said, possibly leaning a little more towards drunk than buzzed. "You put your - uh, your ssssstupid fuckin' self in - like, in, uhhhh, box."

(Izuku's starting to realize that they'd both probably been drunker than he'd remembered.)

"Yeah, a ffffuckin' box," Kacchan had slurred. "No - uh, not a _fucking_ box, like - a cardboard box in yer - yer head, 'n you stuff all your bullshit in there and fuggeddahbout it. Uh huh."

(Yeah, they'd definitely been absolutely sloshed.)

But, regardless, Kacchan's explanation had been surprisingly decipherable even after they'd both sobered up. Izuku had done some research and come across an acting technique that sounded similar. The actor, in order to actually _become_ their character, shoves everything that makes the actor themselves into a little box in the corner of their mind and lets the character take over. That way, they can react to anything the way that the _character _would, instead of the actor reacting as the character. Izuku extrapolates that it's almost like a weird form of dissociation.

So, instead of Kacchan-as-Sobhi freaking out over having something around his neck, Sobhi doesn't react at all, because he hasn't experienced whatever happened to Kacchan to make him..._apprehensive_ about things around his neck.

(Izuku suspects that, even if Kacchan had been using that method, he'd still had to deal with a massive panic attack later, though he's _absolutely _sure that's not what Kacchan called it.)

And Izuku's just..._concerned_, okay? The way that Sera's acting - Kacchan has clearly decided that she's willing to get this deal by whatever means necessary, up to and including sleeping with Petersen. Which is totally fine, of course, and definitely a believable character...

Except.

The thing is.

Kacchan doesn't _do_ sex.

He doesn't talk about it directly, but Izuku's noticed - of course he has; Kacchan's his _soulmate_ and they've known each other since they were_ three months old_.

Kacchan kisses people sometimes. He's good at it. He dates, sure, occasionally. He had that thing with one of his coworkers, Inasa, for a while - Izuku's pretty sure that Camie set them up. (It was one of her better matches, but that's not saying much. It's a very, very low bar.)

But sex? He doesn't even like the concept of it.

And apart from Kacchan's comfort level, there's also the fact that if Petersen somehow gets the chance to look up Sera's skirt, it would become pretty obvious pretty quickly that she's not a cisgender woman, and Petersen doesn't really seem like the kind of guy who'd be cool with that. He seems like one of those guys who thinks makeup qualifies as lying.

Which would be bad for the job.

Which is the argument he's going to use on Kacchan when everyone gets back, because _then_ it won't be about him being 'weak' but about the best way to finish the job.

...Look, Izuku just doesn't want anyone to have to do anything they're uncomfortable with, okay? Especially not his _soulmate_. And Kacchan _would_ do whatever it takes to make this job succeed, even if it's something that will probably force him into a panic attack as soon as it's over. And Izuku would prefer to avoid that, if at all possible.

"Izuku-chan, we're out," says Tsuyu, breaking him from his spiralling thoughts. Wow, he hopes he hadn't started muttering again. That would be awkward.

Shouto's brow furrows and he mouths, 'are you okay?' when Izuku glances in his direction to check, which…does not help him figure out whether or not he'd just been unleashing his thoughts on the world.

Izuku blinks rapidly, offering a half-hearted shrug in return. "Great job today, everyone. Can someone pick up some food on the way back? There's basically nothing edible here."

Shouto rolls his eyes, mock-offended, but doesn't disagree.

It's because Izuku is right and he knows it.

(It's a good thing Petersen thinks they're dead, because Izuku is pretty sure that they'd have starved to death by now if they'd needed to go _completely_ off the grid.)

.

.

.

Tsuyu buys the food - take out from a Vietnamese restaurant. Well, technically, Shouto-chan pays for the food - his credit card, at least. She'd slipped it from his wallet earlier, before they'd left.

She doesn't think he'll mind, and she doesn't like spending her own money if she can help it.

(The money she'd got from fencing the loot from her first big heist went to paying off her parents' mortgage.)

Katsuki-chan and Eijirou-chan took Katsuki-chan's car back to the safe house, but Tsuyu had volunteered to pick up the food, so she took her moped instead. She's always preferred feeling the wind in her hair, and she didn't really want to be stuck in a car with all that...testosterone.

Also, she's probably the only one who can choose meals for everyone without them arguing about it. She's good with people, even if she usually doesn't care enough to show it to almost strangers.

Shouto-chan likes cold things. She's met him before this job - not on a heist, obviously, because more people means that she has to split the money. But she has some _mostly_ civilian friends, like Kyouka-chan and Momo-chan. And they like Shouto-chan, so they've all eaten together a few times. Shouto-chan always orders cold food - cold soba, steak tartare, sushi, salads, edamame; everything he ordered was something served cold and with easily visible ingredients.

(She suspects it has something to do with his father, from the beginning of the conversation she'd accidentally overheard the night before. She doesn't usually condone murder, but...let's just say that if Shouto-chan ever needs an alibi, she'll be happy to provide one.)

Tsuyu gets him Banh Mi, a type of cold sandwich that he can inspect easily, should he so desire.

Izuku-chan had katsudon the other day, when he was feeling adrift. It's a comfort food, not something someone with his almost excessively muscular build would eat often. He's the same as her, except Tsuyu's food of choice is tempura when she's homesick.

He is also seems to spend a large amount of time exercising - lifting weights, mostly, or absently squeezing at the grip strengthener he usually keeps in his pocket (and Tsuyu's actually a little worried that he's going to develop arthritis by the time he's thirty-five, but it's his body so she supposes he can do whatever he likes with it) - so he needs something hearty, preferably something with a good amount of meat in it. But he's also the kind of guy who eats healthy when he has the chance, so the dish she gets for him should probably have some vegetables in it as well.

She gets him a few servings of Bun Bo Hue, a beef soup with lemongrass and pork.

Eijirou-chan definitely has a taste for spice, judging by the way he ordered his curry the other night (extra extra hot). They hadn't even been sitting all that close to each other, but Tsuyu remembers the fumes from his food making her eyes water. Eijirou-chan had just shoveled his curry into his mouth like it couldn't set fire to the ocean, and Tsuyu had been impressed. Her tongue is especially sensitive to spice, so she doesn't really like much on her food.

Eijirou-chan is also a very muscular man, so he also needs meat to keep the muscle he has and build up more. But, given his time in the military, Tsuyu doesn't think that he'll be too picky about eating what lands in front of him.

Although, she's pretty sure that he's Muslim? It's a good thing that this place only serves halal meat.

She gets him several servings of Bo Kho, a beef and vegetable stew, and requests that they make it extra spicy. They shrug, and Tsuyu's pretty sure that they just dump a whole container of Sriracha sauce in it.

Bakugou-chan is harder to read, since every emotion he seems to have is channeled into anger, bluster, or both. To his credit, though, he does seem to be actively controlling his temper - he'd probably be a lot more explosive without all the breathing exercises.

Tsuyu's not quite as familiar with Bakugou-chan as she is with Izuku-chan, but their paths had definitely crossed a time or two, the most recent of which had been in Bali, a month or two before Bakugou-chan had left the company he and Izuku-chan had previously worked for to start a freelance business with some former colleagues.

...Pretty much the only thing Tsuyu knows about _him_, as a person, and not about one of the personas he slipped on like those fancy, elaborate masks she's seen in Italy at Carnivale, is that he's the type of person who cooks his own food whenever possible. She doesn't think it's a _thing_, like Shouto-chan, probably - obviously she can't know for sure, but it seems more like a preference than long-term trauma.

But, then again, it's not like Tsuyu's a psychologist.

He also seems like kind of a picky eater, so Tsuyu ends up ordering him some bánh tráng - rice paper - and some fillings so that he can just put together whatever he wants.

She feels pretty satisfied with herself, when all's said and done.

When Tsuyu gets back, it's only Shouto-chan and Eijirou-chan in the main room. There's the sound of raised voices coming from one of the others, and both of them are eyeing it curiously. She has no doubt that Shouto-chan probably has bugs in each and every room in the building, but he either doesn't remember that he does or has enough respect for privacy that he isn't using them. It's a toss-up, really.

"I have food," she says, brandishing her bags of take-out and resolutely ignoring the abrupt silence on the other side of the wall.

"Oh, solid!" Eijirou-chan says. "I was starting to get hungry. Thanks, Tsuyu!"

Shouto doesn't seem too interested - either in her food or the argument happening in the other room - and just extends a hand towards her. "Can I have my credit card back now."

Tsuyu shrugs and sets it in his open palm. She's already transferred about thirty-thousand dollars into one of her offshore accounts, anyway. Not that it'll stay there, obviously - not with Shouto-chan's computer skills. Tsuyu finds she doesn't really mind that much, and she has the feeling that Shouto-chan doesn't either - this is more of a game for them, where the stakes are low enough that they're basically playing for bragging rights. It's fun.

Eijirou-chan gives them a weird look, then goes back to digging through the bag.

Two seconds later, the door bursts open and they're all on their feet facing it and ready for a fight (in Eijirou-chan's case and - surprisingly - Shouto-chan's) or a flight (in Tsuyu's case, because you can't get revenge if you're _dead_, so fleeing it is), but it's just Bakugou-chan storming inside, Izuku-chan right behind him. He's saying something that causes Bakugou-chan's lips to curl back in a facsimile of a smile that's barely more than bared teeth and a glare, and Tsuyu's not a particularly big fan of confrontation, so she says, "I brought food."

Izuku-chan and Bakugou-chan both blink in the face of the abrupt topic change, but some of the tension drops from their shoulders, so Tsuyu counts that as a win.

"Thanks, Tsuyu," Izuku-chan says, distractedly. His face kind of looks like his thoughts are being pulled in a million directions at once. Tsuyu does not envy him. "Oh, but we should probably - Shouto, did you - ?"

Shouto-chan is apparently psychic now, or has learnt people skills sometime in the past hour, because he says, "Yes, he uses _Encode_, so I was able to rip all of his passwords and financials from there, and I left a worm in his system so I can access it remotely if need be."

Izuku-chan chokes on air, Eijirou-chan's tiny eyebrows fly to the top of his face, and Bakugou-chan's head whips around so fast that his neck audibly cracks.

Even Tsuyu pointedly raises her eyebrows. _Encode _is pretty well-known among thieves, corporations (which, arguably, are usually the same thing), and computer technicians for being a good place to store usernames and passwords to sensitive folders and accounts - anything digital, really. It's virtually unhackable, even for hackers of Shouto-chan's caliber, so the fact that he's managed to crack it is...significant.

Shouto-chan notices their reactions, which is progress for him since he usually ignores social interaction in favor of his screens, and shrugs. "It isn't that hard. I left a backdoor hidden deep in the system when I developed the software, so I can hack it pretty easily."

Izuku-chan splutters. "Y-you created _Encode_?!"

"You didn't know?" Shouto-chan sounds honestly surprised, and when Tsuyu glances over at him, his eyebrows are raised a fraction of an inch. That's his 'absolutely flabbergasted' expression.

Huh. She didn't know he had _that_ much faith in Izuku-chan.

"_No_, I did _not_ know that,_**sh0Ut0**__,_" Izuku-chan says, somehow managing to make it clear that he's using Shouto-chan's screen name instead of his given name. Tsuyu wants to learn how to do that. She wonders if he'll teach her if she asks.

Shouto-chan glances away, not in any particular direction other than 'away from Izuku-chan,' and says blandly, "Yes, I must have been about fourteen - I'm sure that I could do a better job now."

While Izuku-chan's spluttering, Eijirou-chan picks up Bakugou-chan's food from the spread that he's laid out on the table - Tsuyu has very helpfully labeled each take-out container; there's a reason that she always carries around a Sharpie, though usually it's for decidedly less legal purposes - and presses the small stack of containers into Bakugou-chan's chest.

"Here, bro!" Eijirou-chan says, grinning brightly, while he waits for Bakugou-chan to actually take hold of his meal. Bakugou-chan stares at him, like he's forgotten how to blink, or maybe he's just been blinded by the fluorescent lights glinting off Eijirou-chan's incredibly sharp teeth, and then silently brings up his hand to support the containers.

Shouto-chan passes Izuku-chan's food to him once he sits down at the table with decidedly less weirdness, except that Tsuyu knows that he _hates _touching anything edible and very rarely does it voluntarily.

So.

What the fuck is going on here.

Has she stepped into the Twilight Zone or something?

...No, no one's sparkling yet.

(It's possible that she's getting her pop culture references mixed up.)

Tsuyu takes her first bite, to give them a little reassurance that, _no,_ she wasn't actually going to be poisoning them that night - not that they expect that from her, probably, but old habits die hard. Then she watches as the others open their containers - some with barely noticeable trepidation - and then feels her lips quirk at the edges when their expressions change at the sight of what she's chosen for them.

The tensed muscles in Shouto-chan's jaw ease when he sets his eyes on a fairly simple sandwich. He lifts the piece of bread on top and examines the contents, even going as far as to sift through the dressing on top and take a subtle look at each individual layer. Apparently satisfied, Shouto-chan makes eye contact with Tsuyu and gives her a tiny, grateful nod.

Eijirou-chan looks quietly pleased that she's marked all his containers as Halal, and he doesn't make it quite as obvious as Shouto-chan does that he's checking his food before putting it in his mouth. He swirls his stew around, like he's making sure that it's mixed together properly - a completely normal movement, except that Tsuyu also knows that that's a way to separate liquids of different viscosities and a way to check for any sort of liquid that shouldn't be there. Like a poison.

(Tsuyu knows a lot about poisons.)

Bakugou-chan glares at his food, and then Izuku-chan's, for a solid twenty seconds, like he's expecting anything that might harm them to vaporize out of sheer self-preservation. Tsuyu wouldn't blame it, to be perfectly honest. Bakugou-chan's glare is pretty intimidating. Then he stirs Izuku-chan's soup the same way that Eijirou-chan does his own, except that he goes counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, before turning his attention back to his own food.

Izuku-chan just rolls his eyes and watches Bakugou-chan resignedly, waiting for him to take a few bites before he even picks up his chopsticks. There's a story there, Tsuyu is sure of it. An interesting one, too - it seems like it's almost routine for them at this point, and Izuku-chan seems pretty ambivalent about it, but also like he doesn't think it's necessary. Like he thinks that Bakugou-chan is overreacting.

(She's not offended that they have to check their food before eating it, that they can't just trust her word - they've only just started working together, even though it feels like it's been _years_. And, besides, they're _thieves_ \- well, perhaps not Bakugou-chan and Izuku-chan, but they're at least thief-adjacent. That usually comes with some food-related...issues.)

(People rarely become thieves by choice.)

Tsuyu waits until she's positive everyone is enjoying what she's picked out for them, then tucks in to her own dinner.

There's a few moments of silence while everyone savours their meals, which is broken when Eijirou-chan exclaims, genuinely surprised, "Wow! This is actually pretty spicy!"

Tsuyu's mouth quirks up a little at the corners, and she blinks twice, hiding her pleasure at making the right call asking the chefs to use _all _the sriracha sauce.

Bakugou-chan scoffs. "Yeah, right."

"Nah, bro, it really, really is!" Eijirou's eyes are lighting up with excitement now, and he looks like he's restraining himself from doing a dorky little victory dance.

Tsuyu wishes he wouldn't. She bets it would be pretty funny to watch.

Bakugou-chan opens his mouth, likely to say something cutting, but then his eyes catch on Izuku-chan, where he's talking quietly to Shouto-chan. It's a little weird to see them sitting so close together. From what Tsuyu knows of Shouto-chan, he doesn't really like to be touched. So, the fact that he's leaning towards Izuku-chan, and that they're sitting so close that they're shoulders are just barely brushing? It's weird. She should probably text Momo-chan about it.

Tsuyu discreetly takes a picture with her phone. Momo-chan will require proof.

Bakugou-chan clicks his tongue against his teeth instead of saying anything and rolls his eyes wordlessly, crossing his arms in a way that he probably thinks makes him look tough.

Personally, Tsuyu thinks it just makes him look petulant.

Eijirou-chan laughs and stretches out his arm to offer Bakugou-chan his bowl. "Katsuki, bro, you _have _to try this. Wait - unless you can't handle spice?"

(Izuku-chan's head jerks upward at the sound of Bakugou-chan's name and he stares at the both of them without blinking for a long moment.)

The way Eijirou-chan says it makes Tsuyu think that he's actually concerned, and not in any way challenging him, but, well. Bakugou-chan doesn't seem to see it that way. He's a competitive little shit, that one.

(This is one of the main reasons that Tsuyu doesn't date boys.)

Eijirou-chan starts to retract the bowl, but Bakugou-chan grabs his arm before he can move it out of reach, and Eijirou-chan stills instantly.

Bakugou-chan's glare bores into Eijirou-chan, and he flicks his head like there's a fly or something by his ear before he says, _"Bring it, shitty hair."_

This is not exactly what Tsuyu was planning when she chose the spiciest dish she could think of for Eijirou-chan, but she couldn't deny that it had perhaps crossed her mind.

Because, see, Bakugou-chan _looks_ like the kind of guy who can eat a ghost pepper without diving for the milk, but, well.

Tsuyu has a feeling that he really, really cannot handle spice. Like, probably worse than _her_, and she can barely take a couple pinches of chili powder.

Bakugou-chan stabs the stew with his chopsticks violently, picking up some vegetables and beef, then, with all the pique of a man who's had his masculinity insulted, shoves it in his mouth.

His face turns bright red almost immediately, but he stubbornly continues chewing despite the fact that his tongue has to be completely on fire. Tsuyu had ordered the stew _extra_ spicy, after all. With _all _the sriracha.

Bakugou-chan swallows, and promptly licks his lips - probably to get some air on his tongue - and unintentionally drawing Eijirou-chan's eyes. He parts his lips, too, letting his mouth hang open slightly, in a vain attempt at 'subtly' making his mouth cool down.

Bakugou-chan visibly gives up pretending the spice isn't affecting him when his eyes start watering so much they put waterfalls to shame and sprints to the sink to wash out his mouth, even though Tsuyu is fairly certain that he knows that won't actually help very much, and Shouto-chan and Izuku-chan glance at each other out of the corners of their eyes and burst out laughing, like they can't hold it in any longer.

Izuku-chan's laugh is quiet but bright, and he keeps glancing towards Bakugou-chan reflexively and breaking into new fits. It suits him, somehow, but Tsuyu was kind of expecting him to have a boisterous laugh like Eijirou-chan.

Shouto-chan's laughter is rough and airy, like he's not used to it. Tsuyu knows what that's like - you get out of practice when you live and work alone. At least she has her family, even if they don't exactly know what she does for a living. Shouto-chan has Momo-chan and Kyouka-chan, and family's always been a kind of touchy subject with him. So it's nice to hear him laughing, even if it does kind of sound like someone's taken one of those terrifying sink demons Americans have for garbage disposal to his throat.

As Eijirou-chan grins wryly and shakes his head before going after Bakugou-chan, presumably to bestow some milk upon him like the angel he pretends to be, Tsuyu smiles, letting out a little huff of air, and takes another discreet photo. After a moment, she decides to take a short video as well.

Momo-chan won't believe that Shouto-chan is laughing without undeniable proof.

Thank goodness for Snapchat.

.

.

.

The next morning finds Izuku sitting with Shouto in a cafe across the street from the Center for International Business, even though it would really make more logistical sense for him to be inside the building, since he's supposed to be playing Sera Katsumi's soulmate sometime in the next ten minutes. And, normally, he would be doing the thing that made the most sense logistically, except.

Except, there's something he's noticed about Shouto, when he's hacking.

A couple things, really.

For one, whenever Shouto ventures into the outside world, he does his utmost to conceal his face - which, to be fair, is pretty memorable. There aren't really a lot of people with white hair and an eyepatch walking around outside of conventions - or even just an eyepatch, since Shouto's wearing sunglasses over it in an effort to keep a low profile, in addition to a black wig. Except - anything he does to obscure his face makes him look suspicious. Like, for example, today he's wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and black skinny jeans or possibly leggings - Ochako probably knows what they are; jeggings, maybe? - that are kiiiiinda making Izuku drool a little.

But. Anyway.

The point is that, well, someone dressed like that, sitting alone in a cafe? It looks pretty damn suspicious.

Adding another person sitting across from them, looking at them fondly ever so often? _That_ looks like a date. Which, at a coffee shop, wouldn't be particularly noteworthy.

Then there's the other thing that Izuku's noticed about Shouto. When he starts hacking, it's like his consciousness gets sucked into the computer. He barely pays any attention to his surroundings. Which, you know, wouldn't be problematic were he in one of his safe houses, where every inch is covered by cameras and various other security measures that are most likely connected directly to his laptop.

Except, that's not where they are now. They're on a cafe patio, out in the open, across the street from where a man who tried to kill them will be in the next seven minutes.

Thus why Izuku is sitting across from Shouto at a small table outside the cafe, nursing a take-out cup filled with coffee while Shouto taps away on his laptop with a single-mindedness that Izuku finds himself pretty impressed by, even if he probably shouldn't because what they're doing is kiiiiiiinda illegal.

(Who was he even trying to kid at this point.)

As Kacchan had said, once Izuku had explained the plan: "This sounds pretty fucking illegal, Deku…"

And then Izuku had mentioned what Petersen had said about All Might, and, well.

_("That damn sonuvabitch is fucking __**dead**__.")_

That had been that.

It's great to know that Kacchan's morals can be malleable given a good enough reason.

The coffee from the cafe isn't particularly _great_ coffee, but sipping at it gives him something to do while he surveys the surrounding area for potential threats. Not that he's really finding any, of course, but he's also keeping an eye out for Petersen, just in case he shows up early. They should have another five minutes or so before Izuku actually needs to head inside, though, and another couple minutes after that before Petersen arrives. By that time, Shouto will be aware of his surroundings again -

And, of course, as soon as Izuku thinks that, Petersen's car pulls up outside the Center for International Business.

Damn.

.

.

.

Eijirou's on the third floor of the Center of International Business, where Liu International ostensibly has an office.

(Spoiler alert: They don't actually have an office there.)

(Well, technically.)

Izuku and Shouto sitting at a table in the patio area of a cafe just across the street, Tsuyu is somewhere in the vents or possibly the stairwell (?), and Katsuki is inside the conference room that's adjoined to the empty office that they've claimed as their own for today. Or - is it Katsumi, now? He doesn't really understand how this whole thing works, but it's pretty manly that Katsuki's so good at it!

Katsuki-as-Sera-Katsumi is inside the conference room already, exchanging pleasantries with the guys that Eijirou's managed to round up to be the buyers.

"_So, um, I didn't find much in the way of yakuza, but I did find a few guys from the Triads - will that work?"_

"_Do they speak English?" Izuku had asked, distracted by something on his computer screen._

_Eijirou had shrugged. "Not well."_

"_Then we're good. I've got something even better than the yakuza, and adding in the Triads will just be the icing on the cake."_

Izuku'd had a kind of creepy grin on his face when Eijirou had told him about the people he'd been able to contact. It sent shivers down his spine, even just remembering it. No wonder Izuku had been so good at his job in insurance. He's got the kind of face that can look angelic one minute and then shift just slightly into something that makes it look like he'd enjoy eating your face off the next. Eijirou doesn't blame the thieves who'd immediately given up their prizes at that face.

Eijirou has what is pretty much the easiest job today - all he had to do is change out a couple signs. Granted, he had a very short time frame in which to switch them, but he's done now - the name plate by the conference room now reads 'Liu International' - and apart from that, he's just sort of...hanging out on the third floor, in case he's needed to bash some heads. Izuku has assured him that it's a very remote possibility - it only comes into play around Plan V (the letter, not the roman numeral) - but, well, with the way things have been going…

It's Eijirou's favorite kind of job, though. Protecting people - in this case, Katsuki or Katsumi or whoever they are right now, not that they probably need protecting. So he doesn't really mind.

Katsumi steps out of the conference room and gives him a small smile with half-lidded green eyes, and then her stance shifts and - oh, yeah, that's all Katsuki now.

(He has a very distinctive stance, okay?)

Katsuki's hand twitches at his side, like he wants to run his fingers through his hair, but he's refraining since he's wearing a dark-haired wig. It's a good wig, too, Eijirou notes - he only knows a little bit about wigs, mostly just enough to tell when someone could potentially be hiding something other than hair beneath it, but he's also always had a pretty good eye for quality. And Katsuki's wig is - it's definitely top of the line. Eijirou's kind of wondering where he managed to find one of that quality in such a short time period. Unless - well, some soulmates seem to have some sort of...psychic connection, almost? That's not at all what it actually is or what it's called, and there isn't really any empirical evidence proving it, but that's how Eijirou's come to think of it. Maybe Katsuki had subconsciously felt that Izuku was in danger of being exploded and...ordered a wig ahead of time?

Yeah, that sounds a little too outlandish, even to Eijirou.

The psychic connection, though - that's definitely a thing that happens, sometimes. There was this guy in Eijirou's unit, the first time he'd been on a tour in - well, he tries not to think about that too much. But, well, this guy - Pasha, his name had been - he'd found his soulmate in the middle of a battle. She'd been an insurgent on the other side.

They'd locked eyes in the middle of the battlefield and nearly dropped their weapons, so it could only really have been one thing. Eijirou had only seen it out of the corner of his eye, since he'd been a little busy fighting off three other opponents, but - the woman, she'd shot Pasha almost point-blank, and Pasha had _dodged the bullet_, a feat that was physically impossible unless he'd had some significant prior warning.

It had been so insane that they'd both paused, eyes wide, and _Eijirou_, of all people, had actually let down his guard for a split second. The two remaining opponents had quickly taken advantage of the distraction, breaking one or possibly two of his ribs, and Eijirou'd had to rip his eyes away from the astonishing sight to take care of them.

He'd looked up seconds later at the sound of a gunshot to see Pasha lying on the floor bleeding from the hole in his chest and the woman fleeing from the battle site.

He'd let her go - _of course _he had. He'd been a little too busy trying to staunch the bleeding to run after her, but despite his best efforts Pasha had died in his arms moments later.

Finding your soulmate - that was supposed to be some big, life-changing moment. In the movies, it was usually some sort of love-at-first-sight sort of thing, but it rarely worked out that way in real life - and Eijirou kind of thought it was a disservice to the people who'd decided their bonds were platonic. But - regardless of whether soulmates decided their bond was romantic or platonic, or even for people who'd only just discovered each other, killing your soulmate just kind of..._broke_ you. It's like the universe itself gets mad at you for fucking up its plans and decides to punish you anyway it can, even though you're already dealing with the fact that you've irrevocably shattered an important part of yourself and you're trying to put the pieces back together - except that you _can't_, because you've _killed_ that part of you, and you'll never be able to get it back..

Pasha's soulmate probably hadn't lived too long after killing him.

(Eijirou had ordered mirrored colored contacts the next chance he got. He didn't want to meet his soulmate the way Pasha had.)

(His eyes have looked green pretty much ever since.)

Eijirou's broken from his thoughts by a brief burst of static from his earbud, then Izuku's saying: "Kacchan, Eijirou, _he's here._"

_Fuck. _That's not good.

Especially since Izuku is supposed to be playing Sera Katsumi's newly found soulmate.

Which he can't exactly do if he's outside the building and Petersen is between him and the entrance.

So.

"Look, I can't play the hot female mediator _and _the muscled-up ex-mob guy _at the same time_, Deku, that's fucking _impossible!_" Katsuki hisses. "What the fuck were you even doing out there?"

"Fine, Eijirou, you do it," Izuku commands. Man, what happened to the stuttering from the first job?

Then what he says actually registers. "Wh - but? I thought you two were soulmates," Eijirou half-asks, incredulously. "You're fine with me pretending to date your soulmate?"

"We're platonic," Izuku says distractedly. "If it's fine with Kacchan, it's fine with me."

Eijirou blinks rapidly, trying to process that, then turns to Katsuki. "...You down with that, bro?"

Katsuki gives him an unreadable look, tucking a strand of his wig's dark hair behind his ear. "If we do this, you're going to have to call me 'babe.' Think you can do that?" He gestures to his entire body, and apparently he's somehow managed to work out that Eijirou is a hundred percent gay sometime in the whole two days they've known each other.

But Katsuki's already made it clear that Sera Katsumi isn't _him_. It's a part he plays.

"Dude, I would be _happy_ to call you 'babe,'" Eijirou says, maybe a little too eagerly because, well, Katsuki's hot _and_ smart and anyone would be lucky to have him as a boyfriend, really.

Katsuki clicks his tongue - no barbell for this character, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately? Because that means fewer distractions for Eijirou) - against his teeth. "You also can't fucking call me 'dude,' and we'll have to get you into a less shitty costume in less than five fucking minutes."

Eijirou shrugs, grinning widely. "I mean, it can't be worse than that retrieval job I did in Guatemala." That sentence contains all the information he's legally allowed to say about that job. He's not even allowed to say who had been involved. Or what.

(On an unrelated note, baseball fans can be pretty hardcore.)

Katsuki gives him a sharp look that _maybe _implies that he'd heard about it and was perhaps a little impressed, but Eijirou isn't going to read too much into it. Even with the revelation that Katsuki and Izuku are platonic soulmates, he doesn't want to get his hopes up. Who knows if Katsuki's even attracted to him?

(But, impressing a hot guy? Definitely a plus in his book.)

Katsuki tugs on his arm, pulling them into the nearby maintenance closet, and Eijirou allows it. He maybe digs in his heels just enough to get the muscles in Katsuki's arms straining, though, because _damn._

Katsuki has apparently stashed a duffle bag full of disguise...things (?) behind some cleaning supplies. So that's where his bag had gone… Eijirou had been wondering, since there was no way that Katsuki had somehow managed to tuck it away into the dress he's currently wearing.

Katsuki rifles through the duffle bag, and Eijirou is astonished to discover just how much _stuff_ he's managed to fit in there. It's a small duffle bag, but inside is two suits (one tailored for a man, one for a woman), a pair of jeans Eijirou is pretty sure would need to be _painted _on if Katsuki wants to actually wear them, two button-downs, a couple t-shirts, a pair of heels, a pair of tennis shoes, and a veritable boatload of makeup...implements that Eijirou doesn't actually know the names of and doesn't really want anywhere near him, if at all possible.

He must look overwhelmed, because when Katsuki glances at him he clicks his tongue against his teeth and kind of twitches his shoulder a little? "You got a way to make your shitty hair - " Katsuki gestures to his spikey, gelled hair, and Eijirou is about to take offense when he finishes with: " - less distinctive?"

Yeah, okay, that's fair. Not many people have bright crimson red hair with six inch spikes sticking straight up.

Eijirou shrugs. "I mean, if I dunk my head in a sink for a few minutes I might be able to get some of the dye and gel out."

Katsuki stares at him - his hair, really - for a long moment. "That's not how hair dye fucking works, idiot."

Eijirou laughs, maybe a little breathlessly. "Normally, it wouldn't, no - but, well, this probably won't make any sense, but last week I kinda felt like I might need to lose the color quickly so I didn't bother bleaching or setting the color or anything, and this particular brand washes out really quickly if I don't. Weird coincidence, huh?"

Katsuki's eyes slide from Eijirou's hair and land squarely on Eijirou's and -

There's this sound - it's like a Jahannam-esque combination of microphone feedback and a song you might hear in a dream, too indistinct to actually identify.

Eijirou instinctively cringes away from the noise, squeezing his eyes shut and twisting into himself. The sound cuts off almost immediately afterwards, which is - strange? Like? What?

It makes no sense.

Eijirou glances back towards Katsuki, and finds him doing the same. Their eyes meet again, and the same unholy mixture of garbled music (if it can even be called that) and the sound of nails on a chalkboard greets his ears. Katsuki winces too, so it seems like he's hearing the same thing.

-̧͉̼͎̼̲͈̪̥͗̃͆͒͗̔̍̃͟͡͠ ̛͍̪̥͙̥̙̤̑̋̔̓̇̀Ả̞̯̯̓̎-͍̑d̨̳̠̰̲̲̳̘̈̒̇̃͐̅̋͛͘͜ ̣̘̯̇̃͘İ̧̜̣̣̖͎̮͆͊̃̈͠͠ ͈̮̮̺́̀̆͠-͙͗-̖͇̯͒͛̂-̨̙͔͕͇̪͚̫̾́̿̇͛̏̇̕zń͈̳̹̜̄̊͌'̢̛̼̱̺̭͉͔̘͇͒͑̔̈́͑͝͠͠t̞͑ ̣̥̻͒̈́͘t̨̪͑̕r̡̢̯̭͙͉͎̎͑̑̉̒̽́-̢̻̺̖̙̏͛̑̊̎͢͠-̗̍-̱̘̺̮̌͆̃̾͜͠n̢̡̦̜̰̙͔͔̈̋̽͂͗̋͂̚ ̘͍̰̱͍̺͆̈́͊̽̊̎̋͟

̡͔͐͘T͓̱̺̻͆̏̕̚ǫ̠̞̜̾͗̃̈͂͘͟͢ m̡͖̙͈͕̯̦̾̋̇͆̉̉͝-̡̥͍̘͓̎̉̾̈̀-͇͘t̠̤̯̠̹̑̓̃̀̚ ̢͈̟̹͈̟̙̠̤̔̉̽̏͗̈́̃͘͞t̡͚̪̲͉́͊̄̂̆̓͟h̓ͅ-͉̹͍̖̅̍̏̈́͟͝-͎͎̥͎͍͂́͗͒̉̆͌̏͜͢ͅ ̛̖͕͈͂̈̃͟h̡̗͇͇̟̳̀̿̍̚̕͞ȩ̞̙̟͔͊͛̾̚͝-̧͔̓͆̀͢-̢͈̺̙̭̪͊̊̀͆̋̕͢͠t̨͔͉͚̻̫̹̭̀̊̂͆͗͑̂̚ ͍̳͖͕̮͎̏͂̍͒́͘-̢̼̟̇͂͠f̣͈͊̉̌͢ ̛̣̥̲͎̝͕̥̀̓̈́͊͗͋ì̘͔͗ṟ̣̩̜̹͇̭̬̽̓̍̂̕̕̚͟͞͞-̧̦̹̬̼͚͆̑̊͆͑̌͛ͅn͈̣͓̟̆̃͊͞ ̡͇̀̊-͇̈́

What the actual fuck?

A burst of static from the earpieces - completely distinguishable from whatever is going on with Eijirou's ears - interrupts the tense silence, and as one Katsuki and Eijirou glance away from each other.

"Guys, where the hell are you? Petersen's in the lobby right now, and we are _not_ in the building directory! I can give you maybe two more minutes, but _get your ass down here, Kacchan._" Izuku sounds stressed, Eijirou notes absently, which is understandable.

This is quite possibly the _worst_ time to be distracted by...whatever the fuck this is.

Katsuki shoves a suit jacket and a pair of slacks into his arms. "Wear these and get as much of that fucking dye out of your hair as you can."

Eijirou nods wordlessly, eyes still on Katsuki. Their eyes meet again, accidentally, and they wince away from each other.

"What the fuck," Katsuki mutters under his breath, eyes wide, before he shakes his head violently, rearranges the flyaway hairs from his wig, and dashes down the hallway to the stairwell, where Tsuyu is waving urgently at him.

Apparently they aren't going to talk about this now.

Eijirou is absolutely fine with that.

Maybe his brain will cease to be a continuous loop of _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ by the time this part of the job is over.

.

.

.

Izuku has about forty-five seconds to come up with a plan to prevent Petersen from trying to look up Liu International in the building directory - preferably without giving him the chance to see their faces, because that would blow the whole con.

Which would be bad.

His first instinct is to grab the rusty crowbar from the back of the truck parked a couple feet away and use it to smash some windows and set off some alarms.

Except, he isn't with the insurance company anymore, so that would probably get him arrested. And he can't really pull off this con from a jail cell - or even holding.

Also, what about those poor people whose windshields he would have smashed? What if their insurance doesn't cover it?

No, he needs a different plan.

And then, through his panicked haze, he accidentally overhears the conversation of two women as they walk by.

"_Ugh, there he is…"_

"_Who? The guy who cheated on you?"_

"_Yeah, Mark. I wish I could give him a good slap…"_

Just before they step out of earshot, Izuku says, "I'll give you twenty dollars if you do."

They pause, wary, and turn to face him. Izuku pulls his hat down so that it shades his face and particularly distinctive green hair. "...Why would you do that?" one of them asks - the one who got dumped.

"He's a dick," Izuku says, matter-of-factly. He's not wrong, even if he doesn't know the guy. "And now you have an excuse to slap him."

He reaches into his wallet and pulls out a twenty, handing it to her. He is _so _glad it's autumn and therefore it isn't too suspicious that he's wearing gloves.

The woman stares at him for a long moment, then her mouth twitches into a smile that's just slightly shaded with bitterness at the corners. "You've got it, mister."

She's a woman on a mission now, sprinting across two lanes of traffic to the international business center, her friend not two steps behind.

Yeah, that's a way better distraction. Someone gets revenge, and there's a _lot _less property damage.

Shouto blinks, glancing up at Izuku when the slap rings out from across the street.

"Are you done?" Izuku asks, gathering his jacket and backpack.

Shouto blinks twice, rapidly. "...Yes?" He probably has no idea about anything that's happened outside the realm of computers in the last twenty minutes.

"Good. Come on, you're with me - Petersen's early."

"Shit." Izuku blinks and Shouto's got his extensive set-up packed away, which is pretty damn impressive. He hoists his backpack over one shoulder and angles his head towards Izuku, in a practiced way that makes his hood fall over his eyes, shading the upper half of his face. "What now?"

Izuku stares intently into the middle distance - Shouto's face just happens to be in that direction - and shuffles through his vast array of plans for one that applies to this situation. That's the trouble with having so many contingency plans - after a certain point, they start to become a little _too_ specific. "We're going to be a distraction."

"So that...you can get...upstairs to Bakugou?" Shouto asks blankly, trying to follow Izuku's train of thought.

Izuku is a little vindicated (okay, maybe a _lot_ vindicated) that he was right about Shouto not paying attention to anything happening around him while he's focused on his computer.

Despite not knowing...possibly _anything_ about what's going on, Shouto still follows him across the street without demanding any information. Izuku shivers a little because - wow. That's a lot of trust, right there.

(He hopes he's enough to deserve it.)

"No, there won't be enough time - Eijirou's going to be playing my part," Izuku answers anyway, a little belatedly and still mildly in shock because - just, wow.

Shouto stumbles and nearly face-plants in the middle of the street, which is kind of weird because he's usually quite well-balanced. Izuku grabs his arm and bodily hauls him along behind him, focused on the doors to the building. Petersen's just waved his hand in front of the sensors for the automatic doors, like he's pretending he's a Jedi and the only way to open the doors is to use the Force - so, like a complete dork.

(Izuku's ignoring the fact that he and Ochako did exactly the same thing at the conbini last week.)

"But - isn't Bakugou your...soulmate?" Shouto asks hesitantly, righting himself. He doesn't wrench his arm from Izuku's grasp, and Izuku doesn't let his arm drop. He's trying not to think about that too hard.

"Platonic. Very much platonic. We tried being romantic once when we were teenagers and we lasted, like, less than week. It wasn't pretty…" Izuku trails off, shaking his head to clear it. "Anyway, there's no physically possible way that I can get up to the third floor, change, _and_ be ready to go by the time Petersen gets up there. Well, actually - " He considers the outside of the building, but it's too sleek - too modern, all steel and glass - to allow much in the way of handholds, so scaling the side of the building is out. That would have been a little too conspicuous anyway. " - no, never mind. Eijirou's already up there and he should be able to fit into my suit jacket easily enough - I mean, Tsuyu could definitely pull off 'dangerous mob woman,' but we want the company to look at least _marginally_ legitimate, and stabbing people isn't really the best way to do that…"

"Izuku, you're rambling…" Shouto breaks in, but he - doesn't seem like he minds too much? His lips are slanted upwards, just a little, when Izuku glances back at him apologetically. That's a first. Especially since they're on kind of a rigid time limit.

Izuku shakes his head violently. He does _not_ have time for a minor gay crisis - well, bi crisis, whatever, he doesn't have time for any of it. He realizes, very belatedly, that he's still holding onto Shouto's arm and removes his hand faux-casually, which is about as casually as he can manage right at this second. "Right, sorry - we need to distract Petersen so that Kacchan and Eijirou have time to prepare themselves."

"What are you thinking? The Blade Runner?" Shouto asks. Izuku glances back at him again, because he can't possibly be serious? Right?

No. Nope, he's actually, legitimately serious.

"_We are __**not **__going to pretend to hold up an __**office building**__."_ Izuku hisses out of the corner of his mouth as they pass side by side through the doors. He smiles pleasantly at the people passing them in the other direction, making himself easily forgettable. Tapping his earbud to activate it, he broadcasts (perhaps a _tad _shrilly), "Guys, where the hell are you? Petersen's in the lobby right now, and we are _not_ in the building directory! I can give you maybe two more minutes, but _get your ass down here, Kacchan._"

Shouto watches him placidly, and instead of coming up with something remotely helpful, suggests, "The Placebo Effect?"

Izuku stares at him, _this close_ to crying. Why is it the dumb guys who have to be attractive. Why. _"Where the hell would we find hazmat suits - they're not even drinking champagne!"_

Shouto shrugs, annoyingly impervious to Izuku's half-glare, half-suppressed-sob. "How about - "

Izuku presses his finger to Shouto's lips, in a desperate attempt to keep him from finishing that thought. It, astonishingly enough, has the desired effect. Shouto seems just as surprised as Izuku is.

Unfortunately, the action has a second effect: Shouto's tongue brushes against Izuku's finger, accidentally, probably - _right?_ \- and Izuku's brain kind of freezes.

They stare at each other for a long moment, Izuku just barely managing to see Shouto's eye widen from his vantage point. They're - _really_ close to each other, and why is Izuku only just noticing this? His spatial awareness is usually impeccable.

(When had Shouto taken off his sunglasses?)

Izuku retracts his finger slowly, blinking rapidly.

Shouto opens his mouth to say something, but Izuku prevents him from saying anything about whatever the hell just happened or some other astoundingly inapplicable suggestion - he's not sure which he's dreading more - by announcing the first relevant con that comes to mind: "We're doing the LA Shuffle, variant three."

Actually, the longer he thinks about it, the more Izuku realizes that that's...not a terrible idea.

Shouto just nods, immediately accepting Izuku's bullshit answer. Damn, now Izuku wishes Shouto had been his middle school Literature teacher. That woman'd had a sixth sense for when a student was making up their analysis on the spot, or when they were just spouting things they'd heard from other people and didn't actually understand the words they were sayin.

Not that Izuku had _ever_ done that, pshhhhhh.

(Okay, _maybe_ sometimes he'd started researching for a paper and ended up going into an information [read: Wikipedia] spiral, then looked up from his screen to find ten hours had passed. His ability to bullshit analysis would've been very helpful then, had Kayama-sensei not possessed the preternatural ability to know _exactly_ when he was bullshitting.)

Actually, on second thought, Shouto having been his Literature teacher would've been weird, especially with the newly developing crush Izuku's apparently picked up somewhere.

"So am I the boss or the employee?" Shouto asks, face completely serious.

Izuku stares at him for a long moment, feeling indescribably relieved when Shouto's mouth twitches at the corner. He's _joking._ Thank goodness. "Well, I'm the one in the tailored suit and you're the one in the sweatshirt. You tell me," he replies dryly.

Shouto's expression slowly edges into something that could conceivably be called a smirk. "Well, I suppose I'm the boss, then," he says, mock-seriously.

Izuku grins brightly, then spots Petersen making his way to the interactive building directory.

The only reason this has a significant chance of working is because, one, Petersen is on the opposite side of the room with a crowd of approximately fifty people moving between them, and, two, Petersen's only ever seen Izuku dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and leggings and he's probably never seen Shouto at all. So, if they just change their speech patterns a little…

Izuku clears his throat, pastes a scowl on his face, then does his best impression of Aoyama during fashion week. "What the hell are you doing here, Chris? I _fired_ you, two weeks ago!" He pitches his voice to a shrill frequency that draws the attention of anyone in a five meter radius.

"I'm here to get my stuff, asshat," Shouto drawls, in a credible Southern California accent. Izuku's a little impressed.

People start to stare, somehow sensing that a Scene is about to take place. Good.

Well, they wouldn't want to let their audience down, would they?

Izuku can feel his face start to heat up under their scrutiny, so he uses it to his advantage and channels it into his character. Asshat. Thanks for that, Shouto. He couldn't have given the character a real name? He supposed it won't really matter for too much longer, considering this dialogue is perfunctory at best, a prologue to the actual distraction.

Izuku-as-Asshat spits,"How _dare_ you speak to me like that, you _insolent _\- !"

"You _fired _me, remember? I can speak to you however the hell I like!" Shouto-as-Chris interrupts, broadcasting more emotion in his expression and body language in two seconds than Izuku's seen him do in the entire time he's known him. Which...kind of implies that Shouto purposely keeps his affect emotionless. Before the other night, Izuku would have assumed it was intentional, but now...

Before he can get caught up in that train of thought, Shouto-as-Chris moves past him, intentionally knocking against his shoulder but making it look like an accident.

Izuku-as-Asshat stumbles exaggeratedly, like the impact knocked off balance. _"Why, you little - "_

"Sorry," Shouto-as-Chris says, not even trying to sound sincere.

Izuku-as-Asshat puffs out his cheeks and he can feel his face heating up even more, so uses that as an excuse to shove Shouto-as-Chris. He telegraphs the movement as much as he possibly can, so that Shouto has a chance to clamp down on his first instinct, which would probably end up with Izuku facing the ceiling, breath knocked out of him.

(Or possibly dead.)

And while the crowd that's started surrounding them, leaving a rough oval clear as they give them a wide berth - it kind of reminds him of those times he and Kacchan got in fights during middle school and their classmates circled around them, trying to get a better view so they could tell their friends about it later - would probably enjoy that greatly, it might draw a tad too much attention from Petersen, who's glancing over with mild interest.

Shouto shoves him back, not telegraphing _quite _as much as Izuku had but the set of his shoulders says that telegraphing at all physically pains him, so Izuku's probably lucky to get _that_ much warning.

Izuku staggers backwards, then winds himself up again for a heavily telegraphed punch and suddenly they're in the middle of a half-assed sparring match in the lobby of an office building. They're barely hitting each other, and not with any significant amount of force behind the blows, which doesn't sound as hard as it actually is.

Because, see, Izuku's a pretty okay boxer. He's been boxing for years - almost a decade, at this point - and that means that he's used to throwing his weight behind a punch. Which means that _not_ putting much weight behind a punch - they're basically love taps at this point, rather than anything remotely painful - is actually much harder than an all-out brawl. Izuku suspects that it would be even harder for Shouto, who's had much more training than he has.

It's interesting, though - they've only known each other, face-to-face, for less than a week, and somehow they're able to intuit each other's movements. Izuku steps back just as Shouto lands a kick, then Shouto's shifting his weight to invite a punch to the stomach. Izuku takes that invitation, and Shouto curls around the punch slightly before it brushes against the fabric of his shirt so that it doesn't cause any damage. He throws a wild punch and Izuku dodges it easily, responding with a whack to the head with his prosthetic hand...

It's more like a dance than a spar, now.

And - the important part is that it's catching Petersen's attention.

(Not that Izuku kind of wants to ask Shouto to spar with him later.)

(Would that count as flirting? Ochako and Kacchan would probably say yes, but he's not sure if he'd trust them in this situation.)

(Izuku is such a disaster bi.)

He flinches away from Shouto's next blow, a little more than necessary, because a burst of static blasts through his ear bud.

"Bakugou-chan is on his way down," Tsuyu reports, and Izuku breathes a mostly silent sigh of relief. "He - wow."

"What?" Izuku hisses, worried, while he dodges another carefully telegraphed punch to the shoulder.

"He just parkoured down three flights of stairs in high heels," Tsuyu says, admiration leaking into her normally neutral, croaky voice.

(There's also the sound of someone choking on their spit - probably Eijirou.)

Kacchan-as-Sera-Katsumi opens the door to the stairwell, not a hair out of place. Her dress settles elegantly, the hemline a few inches above her knees, the dark fabric heavy enough that it isn't too mussed by Kacchan's preferred method of travel. Izuku's not sure why everyone seems so surprised that he and Kacchan can parkour - how else were they supposed to keep up with the other three throughout their...various exploits? And of course Kacchan decided that he needed to be able to do it in heels - he's a perfectionist, after all.

Petersen notices her - well, the dress - almost immediately, and he visibly starts to salivate - kind of like that one guy from Izuku's high school, whose hair was styled into these weird purple buns that he apparently had thought made him look cool. No one had particularly liked him, just as - as Izuku had inferred from the distinct lack of personal photos in Petersen's office - no one particularly cared for Petersen.

Izuku supposes the dress is pretty enough. It's made of a dark blue fabric, with long, flowing, off-the-shoulder sleeves to de-emphasize Kacchan's masculine shoulders that lead into a ruffled neckline that somehow manages to completely cover his false breasts and yet emphasizes their existence in a way that draws the eye. The back of the collarline drops abruptly, once the sleeve finishes, leaving most of Kacchan's back showing in a calculated display of skin.

It would probably catch Izuku's eyes on anyone else _except _Kacchan - because, well. It's _Kacchan_, and they are distinctly _not_ romantically compatible.

Kacchan leads Petersen towards the elevators, and his eyes are distinctly lower than the back of Kacchan's shoulders. The dress is doing its job, then.

(Kacchan had _cackled_ when he'd seen the dress in the store, and he'd bought it without a second thought. This was probably why.)

The elevator doors close behind them, and Izuku and Shouto decide to end the fight simultaneously, communicating their plans for the finale through brief, stolen moments of eye contact. The crowd's getting louder, their buzzing so loud that it's actually starting to affect Izuku's balance a little.

Weird.

They sock each other in the jaw simulatenously - gently, though; that is, as gentle as you can be when you're punching someone in the face. Izuku collapses in a controlled fall to the ground, hand flying to his cheek, leaving Shouto the clear 'winner' of their mock fight as he stands over him. Izuku makes eye contact with him and jerks his head minutely towards the stairs. He receives an infinitesimal nod in return.

Shouto-as-Chris towers over Izuku-as-Asshat, projecting an intimidating and disdainful aura, for a long moment. Then, he takes a casual step back, somehow gives the impression that he's rolling his eye (eyes? Does he have two? Or is the eyepatch covering an empty socket? Izuku's curious, okay) despite Izuku being the only one in a position to tell for certain whether or not he is, and heads towards the stairs.

Izuku stumbles to his feet, brushing off his clothes and blustering to anyone who will listen - which is exactly no one, since the excitement is over now and people want to leave - that he totally _could've _won the fight against that _ingrate_ but he didn't want to mess up his suit too much. Then, when he's absolutely sure that no one is looking at him, he slips off to follow Shouto to the stairwell.

.

.

.

Sera steps into the elevator, Mr. Petersen following close behind her. She can feel his eyes tracing the arch of her back, the curve of her ass. She carefully smothers a smirk - her dress is doing its job, then. She sincerely hopes that Mr. Petersen doesn't get any drool on the hem; she'd like to get some more use out of it before it's stained beyond repair.

The elevator is empty, thanks to all the commotion outside, and she knows for a fact that the security camera in the corner only shows video - no sound. It's the same for all of the cameras in the building, and there aren't a lot. The company who owns the building prefers to use motion and heat sensors on the exits, including the windows, and mostly focuses their manpower on screening people at the front entrance.

Which means that this place has gotten a...reputation, among certain companies.

It's the perfect place for conducting more..._questionable_ business dealings.

Which reminds her.

"Mr. Petersen, before we walk into this meeting, I feel I must warn you - "

This gets his attention, drawing his eyes away from her neckline. Good. She was a little worried that he would pass out, what with all the blood running to his head.

(He's got enough money to be attractive. She'll allow him to take her out to dinner a couple times before she inevitably has to jet off to her next assignment. It'll be fun.)

"About what?" Mr. Petersen asks, apprehensive.

Katsumi waves her hand elegantly, brushing the question aside as if it were something physical. "The..._gentlemen_ -" she says, although she, personally, wouldn't particularly call anyone involved in the drug or counterfeit clothing trades a gentleman. " - bringing you this..._opportunity_ to work with the Chinese government will be expecting some form of...compensation. Not a bribe, of course…"

Mr. Petersen looks like he's about to bail on the deal entirely, but then the seed she'd planted the other day about his rival company, and how Liu International could just as easily make a deal with them, takes hold. She can see it flash behind his eyes.

"A...finder's fee, one might call it," she says, shifting her legs a little so that her skirt rides up a few more inches.

Mr. Petersen's eyes dart down to the bared skin, then he gulps and replies, "Miss - Sarah, I was under the impression that your job was to prohibit stealing?"

Katsumi smiles, close-mouthed. "Not quite, Mr. Petersen. I...keep it _manageable_, one might say. In other words - I _oversee _it."

The elevator doors open at that exact moment, and Katsumi spares a moment to send a prayer of thanks to Ama-no-Uzume for the wonderful dramatic timing before sauntering towards the conference room, swinging her hips perhaps a bit more than strictly necessary.

Mr. Petersen follows her, of course. Men like him are _so easy_ to manipulate.

Katsumi leads him to the conference room, then holds the door open for him. "After you, Mr. Petersen," she purrs, somehow managing to make the innocuous sentences into an innuendo. She astounds even herself sometimes - she's just that good at her job.

She guides him to his seat at the head of the table, across from the leader of the party from Liu International. He's a tough-looking fellow, perhaps in his late forties, with a faint scar splitting his hair on the left side. Underneath his expensive business suit, she can just barely make out the hints of color that demarque his tattoos. The other four people on his side of the conference room are dressed similarly, though their suits are a few careful degrees below his in quality. The blonde one winks at her, and she curves her lips slightly in return, but her attention is for some reason drawn to the man with his long, dark hair in a tight braid.

Their eyes meet -

-̧̫̥̟͈̺̆͛̋̑͛͝ ̠͉̞̽͆͊̾͢n̠̦̬͕̖̲̱̦̫̅͐̆̓́̊͂̓̀-̝̘̖̰̟̩̝͈̇͋̆̄͆̓͐̈́̉͜b̺̠͈̺̤͖̱͔͉͐̎̎͋͒̕͡͠͞-̝̹̱̗̂̋̅̈́͟͡d̡̫̙̤̜͎͇̺̀̊͋̐͋̀̕͢͞͝y̠͙͛̕̚͜ ͙̹̟͇͚͎́̋̆̎͂̋-̡̲̘̱͉͎̐̈̋̀̏̓ş̧͔͔̳̬̌̐͛̇̉͠k̻̥̂̕-̧͙̻̘̍͂͒̐ḋ͓̘̱͌̕ ̧̛̲͕̤̮̞͌̑̏̕͡ỷ̙͖͔͚̓́͝-̧̺̰͍̺͆̎̽͊̐͢͝ų̨̝̟̻̥͚́̆̓̀̎͐̏̚ͅ ̯̍t̛̛̪̫͇͍̺͚̭̰̣͗͗̓̂̂͋̔-̲͈̗̹͈̥̖̈̋̔̈́̅͠ ̢̢̩̥̫͈̭̹̇̀͆͌̈̃͌͝g͖̲̪̣̀̂͞͞-̨̛̩͔̙̩͔͇̻͒̓͗̈́̊͂̇͢͡ţ̢̜̟͔̳̝̌̍̋̀̓͆̂ ̨͍͕̘̘̍̃̆́͡m̧̛̞̱̤̹̮̼̾̆͛̂͑͠-̯̀̐͟ ̢̭̬̩̻̒͌̊̃̀å͔̞̠̤͈͉̟̩͗̓́́̌̌͑̅͜t̥̭̰͑͗͐͋͟t̢̡̙̖̖͊̑̋̎̃͢͡-̛̙̫̳͂̚ç̱̠̖̩͇̻̰̆͒͛̍͑̆̓͟͝͞h̹̭͐͠-͙͖͙͙́̒͛̈́d ̤͙̜̮͍̠̮̏̎̿̒̃͗͊t̞̥̞̙͎̙̽̓̃̎̋́-̥̞͘͠ ̢̡͓̹̈̏̏͂̕ͅy͎̒-͎̕u̧̡̻͙̫̤͙̗̝͆̔͛̎̇̅̽̈́̓̕͟ ̡̨͇̬̳̰̂́̒͒̆͗̀ͅ-̡̛̦̤̃̚

\- and with a burst of hellish static Katsumi is suddenly Katsuki and he's suppressing a violent flinch. Eijirou's doing the same fucking thing - Katsuki can tell by the way he's holding himself, shoulders tight but the rest of his body deliberately loose.

Katsuki's hand flies up to cover his mouth daintily - because, yes, he can fucking do dainty even as Katsuki - as he widens his eyes and raises his carefully shaped eyebrows. "Oh," he says, having to consciously remember to raise the pitch of his voice to a shitty, annoying frequency. It comes out a little strangled. "That's...not at all what I was expecting."

His eyes dart sideways, mostly to get away from Eijirou's piercing stare, but also nominally to appraise Petersen's expression and - holy fucking fuck, is that his _cousin_? What the fuck is Sora doing here.

Huh. Guess he really didn't fucking die fifteen years ago.

(Damn it, he hates when Deku is right.)

(He owes the shitty nerd ten dollars and a Silver Age All Might figurine now. Fuck. He _hates _losing.)

"I was also not expecting this. I am Wu Eiji," Eijirou says, with an incredibly shitty attempt at a Beijing accent - even shittier than his hair. Petersen doesn't seem to notice, still staring forlornly at Katsuki('s fake breasts), but one of the men from the delegation actually winces noticeably.

It takes a lot to make a highly ranked member of the Chinese fucking Triads to wince.

"_Please don't do that ever again,_" Deku says through the earbud, and Katsuki fervently agrees.

"Sera Katsumi. It's a..._pleasure_ to meet you," Katsuki says faintly, sinking back into his Katsumi persona as Eijirou turns in his seat to face the federation and says something in lightly accented Mandarin. Somehow, his Mandarin actually sounds better than his attempt at a Beijing accent.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to make it to dinner tonight, Mr. Petersen," Katsumi says into Mr. Petersen's ear, voice low. He looks - resigned, mostly, which is good, because that means she hasn't lost this deal yet. "This is actually a great opportunity, believe it or not, because in China the connecting of soulmates is a very auspicious event."

Mr. Petersen looks mildly intrigued, so she continues. "For business, especially, it is said that those companies, much like the newly discovered soulmates, are meant to be together in some capacity. It is considered very lucky, because the meeting is fated - thus, both businesses are likely to prosper from the deal. This meeting today marks the beginning of something - mutually beneficial, you might say."

Katsumi's soulmate - Eiji, apparently - is telling the representatives from Liu International about what had just happened in softly accented Chinese. Katsumi knows just enough Chinese - Mandarin, specifically - to serve as a translator for business transactions like this one, but not quite enough to catch every single rapid-fire word that Eiji is saying.

The blonde man who'd winked at her earlier seems like he might have the same problem, but all of the delegates are smiling and nodding, so she takes that as a good sign.

"So it appears this deal is blessed," Katsumi says, and Eiji translates her words for the others. She sneaks a glance at him - yes, she thinks she could like him very much indeed. "Shall we get on to business?"

.

.

.

Izuku peers through the narrow window on the door to the conference room carefully. It's risky, but he's for the most part out of sight of the business men inside - and, well, this building is known in the insurance business (and the thief business, as well; there's a perhaps not-so-surprisingly large overlap) as a good place for shady dealings to take place. Thus, it wasn't shocking to discover that there are no security cameras or audio recording devices anywhere in the room - and, therefore, nothing that Shouto can hack to give them a better idea of what's going on inside the room.

So.

Izuku has to resort to awkwardly watching through the door. Shouto's sitting on the floor beside him with his back pressed up against the door, laptop resting on top of his knees. They can hear most of what's going on inside the conference room thanks to Eijirou's and Kacchan's earbuds - that's what Shouto is working on right now; he's making sure that, while he and Izuku and Tsuyu can hear what's happening, there aren't any nasty feedback loops that amplify anything they might say and distract Kacchan and Eijirou.

Katsumi leans back slightly in her chair, clasping her hands on the table. _"And, about the - __**other **__matter?" _Izuku hears her ask pleasantly.

A range of quickly stifled microexpressions flit across the head of the group's face so fast that Izuku doesn't have the time to process them all. Petersen seems to have missed them entirely, only noticing the congenial facade that he eventually settled on. _"Of course,"_ Izuku hears him say through Eijirou's earbud, a little stiffly - not that anyone who wasn't fluent in Mandarin would know, given Eijirou's smooth translation.

The leader of the representatives from Liu International hands Eijirou a red envelope with a check for two million dollars inside, not that Petersen knows that yet. Eijirou passes it to Katsumi, who switches that envelope with one she's had up her sleeve all afternoon. The envelope looks identical - and it is, except it contains a slip of paper with '$500,000.00' written on it. She hands the new envelope to Petersen and -

"_Izuku-chan, Shouto-chan, the bodyguard is coming up the stairs! ETA ten seconds - !"_

Shouto sits up ram-rod straight, and then he's on his feet in two seconds, everything packed away in his backpack. Izuku searches frantically for an exit that _isn't_ directly into the conference room where their marks are. The only thing he finds is a closet - probably where Kacchan stashed his duffle bag earlier - so he touches Shouto's shoulder and jerks his head towards it. Shouto follows his line of vision and his face somehow gives the impression of resignation, despite the fact that he doesn't actually move a muscle.

Izuku rolls his eyes and gives him a light push towards the closet, following closely behind him - almost toppling him over, in fact, because Izuku had kind of...tripped. Over his own two feet. Damn it. Usually he's way smoother than this.

Izuku just barely gets a glimpse of black hair and something silvery-shiny - piercings, probably - before the closet door closes behind them.

He'll have to buy Tsuyu a fruit basket or something because she really just saved their asses.

And...pretty much the entire con.

She deserves more than a fruit basket, honestly, but that's pretty much the only thing that Izuku can think of that he knows she'd like, other than a bucket of money. On second thought, that's probably a better idea.

Shouto leans back against the read end of the closet, and Izuku offers him a sheepish smile from where he's got his back plastered to the door in a vain hope of keeping it shut. There's maybe half a meter between them - it's a small closet, and they're two fully-grown men. Oh well. They shouldn't be stuck in here _too_ long unless Dabi decides to -

"_Izuku-chan," _ Tsuyu says tensely, and Izuku's heart sinks just a little bit. "_He's still going towards you."_

Shit.

That means they have about five seconds to come up with a plan to hide themselves somewhere in a three-by-seven foot closet, which is just. Fucking great.

Izuku revises his criteria with approximately three seconds left - because all they really need to do is hide their faces in a mostly inconspicuous way and they're golden. That's definitely easier to work with, but how - ?

\- and then Shouto's rolling his eyes and pulling Izuku in by the collar and - oh.

_Oh._

They're...kissing.

That's - it's a really good plan, actually.

(Shouto tastes like strawberries, Izuku notes distantly. Did he have them for breakfast?)

.

.

.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, __**why**__ did I think this was a good idea_, Shouto thinks wildly, lips pressed against Izuku's. And then Izuku's lips start moving - _reciprocating _\- and _holy fucking shit_, he is _good_ at this.

Shouto almost forgets the whole reason why he had an excuse to this was necessary, and then Dabi opens the door. Light floods his exposed eye, subjecting him to the weird feeling of one of his eyes blinking rapidly, almost blinded, and the other being perfectly fine. Well, as fine as it ever is.

And then Izuku pulls at his eyepatch, using the hand cupping the back of his head underneath his hood, and _somehow_ he manages to tug on the end of the knot at the _exact _angle that unties it instantly. It falls down the back of his sweatshirt, to the awkward space between his hood and where his back is pressed against the wall.

Shouto squeezes his eyes shut, because his left eye is used to night vision, not bright lights, and also maybe because he wants to savor this feeling a little bit - is that so wrong?

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Dabi asks, amused, moving to block most of the light from the hallway. His voice is gravelly - it almost sounds...burnt, somehow. Like he's suffering from smoke inhalation or - something, Shouto doesn't fucking know; he's a little busy focusing on kissing Izuku.

Izuku's other hand, the one not shifting down from his scalp to the back of his neck and inciting shivers to run down Shouto's spine, slips gracefully from his shoulder to the front of his hoodie and starts pulling lightly at the zipper, asking for permission - or maybe as a warning?

Shouto smooths his palms up and down Izuku's back, agreeing regardless of Izuku's intentions, and Izuku apparently takes that as the go ahead to shift his attentions to the newly revealed skin of Shouto's neck and _fuck -_

Shouto tilts his head back against the wall, into the shadow of his hood, and groans softly when Izuku starts nibbling lightly at a particularly sensitive spot. Then, belatedly, he remembers that the whole reason they're doing this is because they have an audience. "- the fuck do you want, Sam?" he says, affecting an Australian accent. His voice comes out an octave lower than normal, which wasn't intentional, but it helps to disguise it, so. That's. Fine. "We're on our lunch break."

"Fuck off," suggests Izuku, voice pitched low, the words almost smudged into the skin on Shouto's collarbone and Shouto is _so fucking glad_ that his oversized sweatshirt ends somewhere around his midthigh because _damn -_

Shouto realizes that Izuku's slowing down the movements of his lips, leaning away just slightly , because - well, it's probably because Shouto isn't really responding since he's fucking stuck in the middle of a gay panic cycle. Which is. Something. That's happening.

(Excuse him for being a little distracted.)

Shouto arches his back a little, causing his undershirt to slide down and reveal a couple more centimeters of bare skin as well as having the additional benefit of bringing his collarbones closer to Izuku's mouth, so. That's. A Thing.

Izuku makes a pleased little sound and Shouto can feel the heat rising to his cheeks.

He is. So fucked.

Dabi chuckles and wow, Shouto had kinda forgotten he existed for a moment there. Which is, you know. Not ideal. "Yeah, okay," he says. "I'll leave you two _lovebirds_ be."

"Much obliged," Shouto drawls sarcastically, distantly astonished that his voice comes out as level as it does because _holy shit_, Izuku is good with his mouth.

Just to make sure they're selling it, Shouto slides his hand down from the small of Izuku's back to hover over his ass - not actually touching it, but close enough that Dabi probably thinks he is.

Dabi chuckles again, then he's decent enough to close the door behind him, which gives Shouto about fifteen seconds to get himself back under control before he has to face Izuku again. As a colleague. Fuck.

Izuku's still nibbling at his neck, which is not exactly fucking conduscive to fixing his face back into some semblance of neutrality, but is definitely necessary in case - um.

Right. In case Dabi comes back.

That's why they're doing this.

Shouto allows himself five more seconds to ponder the possible reasons that Izuku moving towards his neck hadn't set off any of his more - _unfortunate_ self-defense reflexes, as a way to try and get his mind off the way Izuku's pressing absentminded kisses into his chest.

(It's astonishing how much Shouto's come to trust him, even though they've only known each other face-to-face for about a week.)

And then Shouto leans away slightly. Izuku sways towards him, eyes half lidded, then he blinks and takes a step back.

Straight into the hand that Shouto has hovering over his ass.

Because this wasn't going to be awkward enough, clearly.

Shouto opens his mouth to say something - _anything_, even just the incredibly obvious _Dabi's gone_ but, like, _preferably __**not**_something like _he touched the butt_, which is pretty much all that's going through his head right now - but then Izuku looks up and they make unhindered eye contact for the first time.

_\- Take me my heart and my soul_

_Pick me apart and look inside -_

What.

As Shouto stares bewilderedly into Izuku's eyes, listening distantly to the song that's playing (_because_ _Izuku is apparently his soulmate? except? Izuku already has a soulmate?)_, Izuku blinks rapidly, probably hoping that something changes. Or, like, maybe that the universe would grant him an explanation as to what the actual fuck is happening.

It doesn't.

And the song's still playing.

_\- Fill me with dreams I can't hold_

_Keep me afloat in this cold world - _

"_What the fuck,"_ Shouto whispers emphatically.

Izuku's Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, and Shouto can't stop his eyes from darting towards it. The music stops, and he is not in a position to deal with the whole situation, so he doesn't look up.

(He can still feel Izuku's eyes boring into him, even as he keeps his gaze averted.)

Izuku taps his earbud, turning it on. "Kacchan. When we get back…"

Shouto ties his eyepatch back on, because he _cannot_ _fucking deal with this right now_. Izuku seems to be of the same opinion, giving him a small, distracted smile in response.

"...we need to talk."

.

.

.

As soon as Izuku steps into Shouto's safe house and sees Kacchan, he grabs him by the bicep, fingers covering the tail of the dragonfly tattoo he'd gotten the day after All Might died, and drags him back out the door and into the next room. He leaves Eijirou and Shouto in the main room - Tsuyu is nowhere to be found.

(He absently notes the way that Kacchan is studiously avoiding Eijirou's gaze, and vice versa, which is out of character for both of them, but he files it away in the back of his head because he's understandably maybe freaking out a little because his _entire perception of the world is being turned on its head, okay_.)

Kacchan pulls his shoulder from Izuku's grip as soon as they step foot inside the other room - Izuku's a little surprised that he'd allowed himself to be dragged, honestly - and crosses his arms belligerently. "You said you wanted to talk, so fucking talk..."

Izuku's mind is still swirling, so he misses the way Kacchan trails off, like he also has something important to say, too focused on trying to come up with a way to say 'are we sure we're really soulmates' with, you know, a modicum of eloquence.

"Kacchan, are we sure we're soulmates? Because I just heard music when I looked in Shouto's eyes? And it was definitely _not _'You Are My Sunshine?' "

Or he could just blurt it out. Great. Where did his brain-to-mouth filter go?

Kacchan blinks, surprised, which is fair because it is _impossible_ for one person to have two different songs. Even poly soulmates all hear the same songs when they look in each others' eyes, no matter the configuration - "That fucker has two eyes?"

Oh.

That is…

Not what Izuku was expecting him to focus on.

"Yes? I mean? It's definitely damaged and he probably has some impaired vision but - " Izuku shakes his head. " - that really wasn't what I was expecting you to take from that, Kacchan."

Kacchan just shrugs, doesn't even insult him, and that's the thing that breaks through Izuku's barrier of _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ and how he knows for certain that something is up.

"You're acting awfully calm about this, Kacchan…" he says reproachfully.

Usually, just using that tone wouldn't work, even though he'd copied it from his mother and he _knew_ that it gave Kacchan vivid flashbacks to that one time they'd decided setting off fireworks indoors was a _grand_ idea.

(In his defence, they were six at the time.)

But it looks like Kacchan has _maybe_ found a charitable bone somewhere in his body - or maybe he's just taking pity on Izuku, which seems much more likely - because he actually explains himself, kind of.

"It makes some things make a lot more fucking sense," he mumbles.

..._kind of_ being the key words in that sentence.

"Like what?" Izuku asks patiently, because it seems like Kacchan's lost in thought and not actually purposefully withholding information. Probably. It was kind of hard to tell with Kacchan.

Kacchan shakes his head violently, clearing it, then produces a non sequitur instead of an answer: "So y'know how Shitty Hair and me were supposed to be pretending that we're fucking - soulmates?"

Izuku nods because, yes, that had, in fact, been the plan that he'd come up with.

Kacchan takes a deep breath, visibly steeling himself and now Izuku's _worried_. "When we did the whole fucking - look-into-each-others'-eyes schtick, something...fucking. Happened." He pauses again. "It was - " He swallows, like his throat's suddenly dry. "It sounded - _broken_."

….Izuku would _really_ like to give Kacchan a hug right now, but he knows it'll be rejected because Kacchan likes to pretend that the only emotion he has is anger. He doesn't like feeling vulnerable, so he covers up any emotion he thinks makes him 'weak' with anger that's mostly bluster.

(Izuku has _opinions_ on how Kacchan was raised, okay, and he is _very glad_ that his therapist had realized that Kacchan's family situation was not great for his mental health and found him a good - like, _actually good_ \- foster parent among one of his husband's friends because otherwise this whole situation could've turned out _very differently._)

So, instead, Izuku breaks out the logic: "You said this happened during the heist, right?"

Kacchan nods jerkily, shoulders tensed in the way that means he thinks he's looking for a fight.

"What color were Eijirou's eyes?"

Kacchan freezes. "...the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question, Kacchan," Izuku says, a smile threatening to pull at the corner of his lips.

"...Green." Then Kacchan flushes, like he's embarrassed that he noticed, which is - interesting.

"And what color were your eyes?"

"...Fucking - _green_," Kacchan says, a light of dawning comprehension flickering in his eyes.

Izuku lets his smile loose. "I know for a fact that your contacts have mirrored lenses, and I'm pretty sure that it's the same for Eijirou - I know he uses colored contacts, at least. But in any case, I think that your song will sound a whole lot better if it doesn't end up magnified and reflected back on itself."

Kacchan almost smiles - like, _actually_ smiles, not a smirk, no teeth, and yeah, Izuku has a feeling that Eijirou will be good for him - but covers his mouth with his hand, coughing lightly, before it can fully emerge. "...so what the fuck is going on with us, then," he asks, far more calmly. Well, as calm as Kacchan can be.

Izuku taps his chin with his finger, because now that he's slowed his brain down enough to _think_, he does actually have a hypothesis. "I...might have an idea, but we should probably test it first."

(He's always been better at figuring out other people's problems than his own.)

Kacchan looks...sort of intrigued, except in a kind of glare-y way. "This isn't going to be like the time with the pickles, is it."

Izuku is _insulted._ The _audacity._ "Uh, the thing with the pickles was _your_ idea, Kacchan, and we were only grounded for a week, so I would say that it turned out _fine_." He coughs. "...anyway, it's very safe and it doesn't even involve us moving from this spot if we don't want to. No safety goggles or earplugs necessary."

Kacchan considers this, then shrugs. "What the fuck. Why not. It's not like whatever shitty experiment you have planned will confuse us even fucking more."

Izuku shrugs in agreement because, yeah, that was pretty much his thought process too. "Okay, so - look at me."

Kacchan raises an eyebrow. "The fuck do you think I'm doing?"

"No, I meant - " Izuku shakes his head. "Here, let me just - "

He focuses his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of Kacchan's chest, which is a little awkward since he's still wearing Katsumi's dress, but - yep, he can still distantly hear _you are my sunshine, my only sunshine -_

Next, he shifts his stare upwards to somewhere around Kacchan's nose. _You are my sunshine, my only sunshine -_

Then, to the tips of Kacchan's hair, since he's already taken off Katsumi's wig and now his hair is all sweaty and a little less spikey than usual. The song's still playing and, frankly, Izuku can understand why Kacchan's so irritable around him if this is what he hears whenever he looks at him.

(Kacchan has a tendency to make almost aggressive eye contact with anyone he meets, while Izuku has always preferred to - _not_ do that. It was a matter of self preservation.)

Then Izuku looks straight into Kacchan's eyes, and Kacchan looks back - apparently he's been following Izuku's eye movements - and suddenly there's nothing.

No music, no sounds, just - nothing.

Huh.

"...We should probably call mom," Izuku suggests after a long moment.

Katsuki snorts derisively but doesn't argue. He even goes as far as to pull his phone out of his pocket and press speed-dial.

So. Izuku takes that as approval.

His mom - well, she's also basically Kacchan's mom at this point, so what he really means is _their_ mom - picks up the phone almost immediately, despite the fact that it's probably close to seven in the morning in Japan. _"Oh, hello, Katsuki-kun! I wasn't expecting to hear from you so soon."_

Kacchan coughs, but it doesn't do much to hide the heat rising to his cheeks. "Yeah, well - " He doesn't finish the thought, instead blurting out, "Deku's here," and shoving his phone at Izuku.

'_Thanks, Kacchan,_' Izuku mouths sarcastically, before he puts the call on speakerphone. "Hi, mom."

"_Izukkun! I was starting to get worried! You haven't called me since you landed."_

"Yes, sorry, mom - I met up with some...old friends who needed my help with something and then things got busy…" Well, that's not a _complete_ lie. It's...truthful, even. Kind of.

Kacchan smirks but doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to - his body language is practically radiating smugness.

But, then again, that's kind of Kacchan's default state.

Izuku clears his throat. "So, uh, mom? I -_ we_ have...kind of a weird question for you."

"_Go ahead, dear, I'm listening."_ There's the sound of plates clinking together in the background - she's probably about to start making breakfast.

Izuku takes a deep breath, and he can see Kacchan's shoulders start to tense up again - Izuku decides then and there that Kacchan's next birthday present is going to be a gift card for a masseuse because _wow_. "So, um...how did you know that Kacchan and I were soulmates?"

He waits for the answer with baited breath, and he can't hear Kacchan's mostly silent breathing either so he's probably doing the same.

His mother hums, and there are more clinking noises before she finally answers what feels like an eternity later but realistically is only five seconds, tops. _"I suppose you two wouldn't remember - you were only a few months old at the time. I don't know much about what happened on Mitsuki-chan's end, of course, but I can tell you what I saw."_

"Please," Izuku says.

"_Well, for the first couple months after I had you, I didn't really leave the house much - your father was still around then, Izukkun, and since he bought all the groceries and such there wasn't really a need to - so that meant that I got to spend my days with you! I read to you, sung to you, even played some of those games with the mobiles - what were they called? I don't remember, oh dear - it seems my memory's going..."_

Izuku makes a soft noise of protest.

"_Yes, yes, dear. Anyway, the day you first met Katsuki-kun was the first day that I took you to the park. I was heading towards a group of new mothers until I heard someone singing, so I decided to follow the sound instead, since it was so pretty…"_ His mother hums a tune under her breath that sounds remarkably like _you are my sunshine, my only sunshine_ and Izuku and Kacchan exchange a _Look_.

"_And by following the sound of that music,"_ his mother continues._ "I found Mitsuki-chan and Katsuki-kun. As soon as I walked up and introduced us, you and Katsuki-kun started humming the same song, and that was when we knew that it had to have been fate that brought us there that day!"_

Izuku bites back a slightly hysterical laugh. No way.

"_Afterwards, anytime we were about to go see Katsuki-kun, I would hum the song for you and you would smile so brightly…"_

Okay. So. His hypothesis was right. Even as outlandish as it had seemed...

Wow.

"_...Why do you ask, Izukkun?"_

How the hell is Izuku supposed to answer that?

So instead of coming up with something intelligent, his brain-to-mouth filter decides to go on vacation and he blurts out, "Because-I-just-think-I-found-my-soulmate-thanks-mom-bye" and then hangs up the phone.

He hands it back to Kacchan, who's looking at him very judgmentally.

"Shut up," says Izuku. "Like you would have handled that any better."

Izuku is not immediately murdered, so he takes that as begrudging agreement.

.

.

.

Dabi is waiting for Franklin Petersen outside the door to the conference room, which is an unpleasant reminder that the League or whatever they're calling themselves must have a tracker on him somewhere.

"You are a terrible bodyguard," he informs Dabi, and Dabi just rolls his eyes. He doesn't deny it. Frank isn't even sure that his purpose is to be a bodyguard, but, then again, no one really tells him anything. "How did you find me?"

Dabi rolls his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "We have trackers on you, obviously," he drawls, and it's nice for Frank to know that he isn't being paranoid. It's not paranoia when someone admits that they're tracking your every movement. Though - wouldn't tracking him through his cell phone GPS be easier?

No, because Frank works in tech - even though he's mostly on the business side of things now, he remembers enough to deactivate his GPS as soon as he unboxes a new phone.

"I thought you were reporting back to your boss," Frank says, not quite a question. He has his doubts about the verisimilitude of that, though, since he'd been close enough to hear some girl whine about missing Dabi when he'd got the call earlier that day. A young girl, though - maybe his sister?

"I was." Dabi arches off the wall he'd been leaning against, reminding Frank vaguely of a cat. A severely burnt cat, granted, but a cat nonetheless. He's a little surprised Dabi speaks as well as he does, considering a decent portion of his face is covered in burn scars, some parts held together with _staples_. He's got a raspy voice, probably from smoke inhalation or something, but he speaks remarkably crisply, in a way that absolutely _reeks_ of an upper-class education and expensive physical and speech therapy.

Frank has no idea what to make of Dabi, honestly.

It's a short, silent ride back to Bettencourt Healthcare, which is good because it gives Frank the chance to mull over something that's been niggling at the back of his head for a few days now. Something is strange, but he can't quite put his finger on what…

...Until he gets back to his office, that is.

It's almost pitch-black inside, since it's evening and almost everyone has gone home at this point so the lights are off.

It's easy to see the red light blinking under his desk.

"_I knew it,"_ Frank hisses, bracing his hand against the doorframe so that his arms blocks Dabi from going into his office. Dabi gives him a mildly irritated look, then opens his mouth to say something - something pithy and unhelpful, no doubt - but Frank puts an end to that before it can begin by pushing him backwards and closing the door behind him.

Frank has his back plastered against the door when Dabi says, mildly, "What the fuck was that for?"

(It's the kind of mild that means imminent bodily harm if you answer wrong.)

Frank gulps, then pretends that he didn't because he is _days away from a seat on the board of one of the most distinguished medical companies in the world, damn it. _"There's a transmitter in there - a recording device of some kind - and they've been listening to me!"

Dabi's expression shifts slightly, into something Frank can't recognise on his mostly-burnt face. "Who has?"

Petersen sputters wordlessly. "Who - who do you think? The - them!" He waves his hands around in the air, gesticulating wildly, as if he can reach out and pluck the words from the air.

Dabi raises an eyebrow.

"The people! The ones that we hired for the blueprints?"

Dabi blinks slowly. "Oh. Right." He doesn't seem to care.

_He doesn't seem to __**care**__?!_

Frank takes a deep breath and tries to explain the situation in small words. "The people we hired for the blueprints have a listening device in my office. That means that they need to be able to hear what goes on in my office, which doesn't help them if they're _dead_. Therefore, they must not be dead. They're trying to make me pay - I should've known Sarah was too good to be true!"

Dabi blinks slowly, unruffled, and Frank gives up trying to explain anything to him and just rants at him. "I mean - an opportunity like this, the same week as the shareholder meeting? What are the odds of that happening? And I checked the directory in the International Business Center, and you know what? Liu International doesn't even have an office there! They probably don't have offices anywhere in the city! And - come on! The Chinese? That's _so_ 2008\. This is all a scam! Who the _hell_ do they think I am?"

Frank storms over to his secretary's office phone, ignoring Dabi's eyes watching him, and uses her computer to search the FBI's phone number. He keys it in, then waits for it to connect.

After Frank has been redirected several times, a low female voice answers, "Hello, this is Agent Rook, Fraud."

Frank lets a shark-toothed smile break out over his face. "Hi, yes, I'd like to report an attempted defrauding of Bettencourt Healthcare..."

.

.

.

The next day, Friday, Frank's day is going pretty well already - he's just presented his (Rockwell's, really, but possession is 9/10ths of the law) prosthetics project to the board; they'd seemed impressed, and Bettencourt's stock has already risen twenty points since the announcement - when he sees Sarah from across the way, holding hands tentatively with her newly found soulmate, and his day gets even better. He doesn't have a grudge against her for bailing on him when she'd found her soulmate; it was completely understandable, really, and she'd promised to introduce him to some of her single friends located in the 'States as a form of recompense.

It'll be a little hard to do that from a jail cell, though, which is his only regret.

Behind Sarah and her soulmate are the Chinese, milling around and mingling with the crowd - perfect, he couldn't have asked for a better set-up.

Frank raises his hand in a wave and calls to her as he makes his way towards her: "Sarah! So glad you could make it!"

And he really is, though probably not for the reasons she's expecting.

She turns to face him, smiling. "Mr. Petersen! It's my pleasure, really. Wonderful party."

Her soulmate smiles too, close-lipped, but his attention is firmly fixed on Sarah. It's completely understandable - she is _hot_ and she's _his_.

Frank's disappointed they didn't have a chance to fool around together before she found him, but that's life, he supposes.

"You're looking quite pleased with yourself," she adds, with a knowing lilt to her voice.

Frank laughs, ominously close to a cackle. "Yes! Indeed! I'm really on a roll today - actually, is your whole party here?"

Sarah looks slightly taken aback, but she nods. "Yes, everyone should be around here somewhere…"

Frank claps his hands together. "Wonderful, wonderful! Why don't we just go ahead and get all the formalities over with?"

"Yes, that sounds agreeable - as long as you have the whole payment?"

Frank waves off her concern. "Yes, yes, that's no problem - I have a conference room upstairs. Dabi will show you. We just need to sign the papers and discuss the payment, right? That'll take, what an hour, tops? Think of the headlines if we could announce both this partnership _and _the new prosthetics design in _one day_!"

Sarah smiles, showing perhaps a few more teeth than conventionally attractive, but she makes it work for her. Her soulmate - Woo something-or-other - is a lucky man. "Very well, Mr. Petersen. I'll go tell Liu International."

She slips her hand from Woo's grasp, settling it delicately in the crook of his arm instead, and they head off to round up the delegation.

Frank putters around the party for a few minutes after Sarah and Dabi lead the Chinese upstairs, making nice with the shareholders and perusing the buffet table - he has a feeling that he won't have much time to eat later.

_Everything is going according to plan._

The conference room is set up in almost the exact same configuration as the one from yesterday, except this time there are security cameras in the room, not that the Chinese know it. There's also a panic button connected to one of the speakers that are usually used for conference calls, which is why Frank'd had Dabi lead the delegation to this room in particular.

The supposed representatives from Liu International are sitting at the other end of the table, in the same order as yesterday, except that their translator is standing next to Sarah by the door. They've got their heads bent together and they're whispering to each other in a language that he can't make out enough of to recognize. Frank's just now noticing, but it looks like they've got mood rings around their pinkies now, though he wonders when they'd had the time to buy them. They're the expensive type, not the kitschy ones kids get at the fair - the ones that look like wedding bands, except instead of silver or gold or platinum or whatever wedding bands are made of they have the mercurial liquid that makes up mood rings. He's a little curious as to how they could have afforded them, especially so quickly - they're _very_ expensive, even though the materials necessary to make them aren't. It's a supply and demand thing, probably.

"Is everyone comfortable?" Frank asks, like it actually matters and they won't be sitting in jail cells within the next twenty minutes. Woo what's-his-face translates his words for the Chinese, and they nod, faces expressionless.

The leader of their group says something, which Sarah translates as: "I assume that we all understand the terms of this agreement?"

Frank almost laughs hysterically, but clamps down on it - he can't give away the game too early, after all. "The terms of the agreement? Of course!" he says jovially, then he can feel his mouth stretch into a smug smirk. "The terms of the agreement are these."

He presses the panic button.

"FBI, don't move!" Within seconds, the conference room is swarming with FBI agents, presumably from the fraud division or maybe the white collar crimes division. Frank doesn't really care - he's sure these Chinese 'businessmen' will be going to jail for a _long_ time.

"Are you alright, sir?" one of the agents asks in English, while the woman next to him says something in Chinese - probably reading them their rights or something.

"Yes, I'm fine," Frank replies, getting to his feet and brushing the creases from his suit.

"_Shì de, xièxiè,"_ says the leader of the group, and Frank only recognizes 'shay shay' - thank you? Why the hell would he be _thanking_ the person arresting him?

Frank thinks everything is going exactly as planned, right up until the FBI agents start cuffing his hands behind his back. "Um? Excuse me, you're arresting the wrong person - the criminals, they're over there. The people pretending to be from Liu International?"

The FBI agents pay him no attention, and he starts getting frantic. Usually, he'd be waving his arms around, but, well, they're currently handcuffed behind his back.

"Listen!" he screeches, then coughs and lowers his voice to a more reasonable pitch. "Listen to me, please, if you just call Agent Rook, in the fraud department, she can tell you - "

The FBI agent who'd asked if he was alright earlier steps closer, towering a good foot or so over Frank. "_I'm_ Special Agent Rook," he says.

Frank's brain freezes because - what? No. No, that's impossible. "No, no, um - do you have a wife? Or a sister? Or something? Because the Agent Rook I spoke to was definitely a woman - "

The big, bulky man cuts him off quickly. "I'm the only Special Agent Rook in the FBI. And you, Franklin Petersen, are under arrest for soliciting a bribe from these foreign nationals."

Frank blinks rapidly, trying to make sense of the situation. "No, I wasn't - a _bribe?_ No, no, no, they're not even from Liu International!"

The head of the delegation scoffs and says something derisive, and the female agent who'd been speaking Chinese earlier translates: "Of course we're from Liu International," she says, as he brandishes what looks like a letter of introduction with an official-looking stamp on it. "You knew that when your female employee contacted us regarding this 'exciting opportunity.' "

Franks shakes his head, bewildered. "I - who? My secretary?" His secretary hardly leaves her desk, and every professional email she sends is dictated by him, so there's no way she could've - oh. "Wait, do you mean - do you mean _Sarah_? I thought she was with you! Special Agent Rook, please." He turns back to Rook, having unconsciously twisted himself to look at the translator. "Please, you have to believe me - Sarah works for them!"

The leader crosses his arms, muscles bulging beneath his suit, as he snaps something in Chinese that the translator says means, "She came to our offices in Boston on your behalf, saying that she worked with you on international deals like this."

Frank's eyes dart around the room wildly, looking for Sarah so that she can corroborate his story - the _true_ story.

Except.

She's nowhere to be seen.

She and her soulmate have completely disappeared from the conference room, leaving no traces behind.

"Sarah? Where'd she - "

Damn, now she was _never_ going to introduce him to any of her hot friends.

...which shouldn't really be his priority right now.

"No, no, that can't be right! She took me to - to your office! In the city!" he sputters.

"No, we don't have an office in this city - the closest one is in Boston," the female FBI agent translates with a carefully non-judgemental expression. "We - "

"I know that! I know!" Frank interrupts her.

" - we met her at your other office," she continues, pretending Frank hadn't spoken - which, really, how dare she? Didn't she realize how impolite that was?

Wait.

His other office?

What - ?

A thought occurs to him, unrelated: there are probably FBI agents outside at the party.

_Shit. _The shareholders.

Frank dashes out of the conference room, completely forgetting that his hands are still handcuffed behind his back until he trips over his own two feet and face-plants down the stairs. He can hear voices shouting behind him, along with pounding footsteps, but they're drowned out beneath the rushing of his blood in his ears. Frank rolls with the momentum, feeling like a cartoon character as he rolls down one flight of stairs and somehow manages to land on his feet before continuing to sprint down the next two flights as fast as he can. It's probably the coolest thing he's ever done - it's a shame no hot chicks were around to see it.

Frank exits his building, reaching up to wipe the blood from his possibly-broken nose, and belatedly realizes that his hands are still, in fact, cuffed behind his back.

This is not a good look for him.

He turns to go back inside, in order to find someone he can bribe into taking the handcuffs off, but then he hears something that just adds on to what is rapidly becoming his worst nightmare.

It's one of the shareholders.

"Hey, Frank!" he says, clapping him heartily on the shoulder. As jovial as his words sound, Frank gets the distinct impression that there's a subtle threat underpinning them. "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

The shareholder gestures to the police cars encircling Bettencourt Healthcare's main office, lights flashing, and the FBI agents and police officers getting out of their vehicles ready to storm the building.

"No - I - I have no clue," Frank says, completely honestly.

Agent Rook sidles up behind him, probably having taken the elevator. He claps a friendly hand on Frank's other shoulder and asks pleasantly, in a voice most assuredly meant to carry, "Hey, is he involved in the bribe, too?"

"_There's no bribe,_" Frank says miserably as the shareholder's hand grips his shoulder more tightly, almost painfully.

"What's this about a bribe?" he asks pleasantly, glaring directly at Frank, and God, he really wishes he could spontaneously combust right now.

"_There isn't one," _Frank says again, like anyone's listening.

The translator gives him a pitying look. "Mr. Chen says he gave you an envelope containing a check for two million dollars. I'd call that a bribe, and so does the U.S. government."

"I didn't - I - what? No! - I never got - " Frank sputters, and then he remembers.

Sarah, she'd handed him an envelope.

Except it hadn't been a check, it had been a piece of paper with a number on it -

But there wasn't really a way to prove that, was there.

"I do hope you didn't deposit that check," Agent Rook says companionably. "It'll look a lot worse for you if you did." He squeezes Frank's shoulder harder, so hard that he can practically feel his joints grinding together. The shareholder on his other side matches his grip, and Frank thinks hysterically that he'll be lucky if he can get out of here with both arms still attached.

"I wasn't - there was no check!" he tries, one last time.

Agent Rook looks at him faux-sympathetically. "You know what I hate more than anything? Liars. And guess whose pants are on fire?"

He doesn't wait for an answer - it's a rhetorical question, why would he? - instead turning to the third agent who'd just jogged up. "Report," he orders.

"Sir," the agent says perfunctorily. "We have agents and officers inside the building working on confiscating files and equipment, mostly computers - "

"Not my computer!" Frank blurts and, God, he really wishes looks could kill right now so that the shareholder's glare could just put him out of his misery, because he's just handed the FBI the perfect place to start.

Rook draws himself up to his full height, a solid foot taller than Frank, and says genially, "As of this week, you have government defense contracts, which means that the PATRIOT Act applies here." His smile gets wider and more vindictive with each word.

Rook pauses, for dramatic effect, and both Frank and the shareholder are holding their breath.

"I can take your mother's Sunday best. I can take every piece of equipment in that building. Mr. Petersen, legally, I can take your _underwear."_

Rook surveys the crowd, sweeping a hand towards the news crew. "And isn't it just _dandy _that there are so many cameras to do it in front of?"

"_No,"_ whispers the shareholder in horror, fingers digging into Frank's arm so tightly that he wouldn't be surprised if he drew blood.

Shredded paper - documents, _proof_ \- starts falling out one of the open windows on the third floor, and Frank has a moment to think _thank God for my secretary_ before someone yells, "FBI! Freeze!" and the paper stops falling.

He's so fucked.

.

.

.

"_Hawks,"_ his current boss says in Mandarin. _"I think it's time we left."_

(_Hawks_ is his name now, even if he still thinks of himself as Sora. Sora's dead - legally, at least, and honestly? There's not too much difference between legality and reality at this point.)

Sora unhooks his mirrored sunglasses from his shirt collar, where they've been hanging since Petersen and his people walked into the room, and puts them on again. He agrees with his boss, what with all the yelling from the patio below (_"You can't take my computer!"_) wafting in through the open window. He can't say he isn't tempted to just blow his cover right here, though, where there are plenty of FBI agents to handle the fallout. This assignment is starting to weigh heavily on him.

"_Yeah, we should probably get out of here,"_ he replies, his own Mandarin only faintly accented. It's close enough to some of the more rural parts of South-Eastern China that he can get away with his accent not being perfect.

It's been, what, almost five years since he was first ordered to infiltrate the Chinese Triads? Fifteen since he'd faked his death and entered training for Interpol's secret Special Ops division.

(He was kind of regretting that now, but hey. What's done is done.)

(It had been nice to see his little cousin, though.)

In the past five years, he's climbed his way up the ladder from a lowly grunt to the right-hand-man of one of the underbosses, which is...good, even though he's had to do some...morally questionable things to get that far.

(Most of his 'confirmed kills' are in Witness Protection.)

(Only 'most,' though.)

(One thing he's learnt during this job? You can't save everyone.)

(Heroes don't exist in real life.)

Sora's boss gets to his feet, and the rest of the delegation follows his lead a beat later. It's _etiquette_. Sora isn't high enough up the ladder to start ignoring it yet, but he cannot _wait_ until he can. Seriously, this is the _Triads_, not some 16th century French court circuit.

(Sometimes he seriously can't tell the difference between the two.)

For some reason, Petersen's bodyguard had stayed behind after he'd face-planted down the stairs. Honestly, Sora couldn't blame him - if he worked for Petersen, he probably would've done the same. Also, that had probably been the funniest thing Sora has seen in, like, at least a year.

The delegation gets into a single file line because, again, _etiquette. _The higher up in the rankings you are, the closer you are to the end of the line. Sora's pretty sure it's something to do with meat shields and snipers. Therefore, Chen , the underboss, is at the back of the line and Sora, as his right-hand-man, is right in front of him. The rest of the representatives are more…expendable, so they go at the front of the line.

They file very civilly past Petersen's bodyguard, who is kind enough to hold the door for them - which just goes to show that you can't judge a man by his looks, because even though he's wearing a fancy suit (an extremely well-tailored suit, Sora feels like he should mention) he looks like he would be more at home in a heavy metal band, rather than playing bodyguard to some mid-level corporate executive. He's got his hair spiked up, piercings all over his visible skin, staples holding together what look like skin grafts, and...it's almost like he doesn't fit in a suit very well? Not that the suit doesn't fit well because, just, _damn_, whoever did that work deserves a box of chocolates or something - and that's just what Sora can tell from the _front_. He feels like he might actually spontaneously combust if he saw this guy from the back. It's just that...he doesn't seem very comfortable in it, or maybe like he isn't used to wearing a suit for long periods of time. But what does Sora know? The man is a stranger.

(A _hot_ stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.)

Sora can feel the bodyguard's eyes (are they blue or grey? He can't quite tell...) piercing into him - the entire group, probably, but he can't seem to shake the feeling that perhaps those eyes are drilling into him specifically, which...doesn't really make any sense?

Unless…

He has a chance?

(_Shut up, Sora, you're __**Hawks**__. The Chinese Triads aren't exactly the most _accepting_ people in the world._)

Sora shakes his head minutely and keeps walking. It's for the best. Besides, the guy is probably a civilian - he holds himself like ex-military, sure, but he's probably not _in the know_.

(Sora had been a little surprised by just how many people had some kind of mafia or yakuza or triad connections, though, so who really knew.)

Still, he can get away with being...friendly.

Sora lets his sunglasses slide down his nose, enough that he can make eye contact with the bodyguard holding the door and -

Sora stumbles because -

_\- I can't change the world_

_But maybe I'll change you mind -_

Well.

Fuck.

(That's not something he'll be reporting to the Commission.)

He recovers quickly, but it's noticeable enough that the guy behind him - his _boss_, fuck, he'd almost forgotten - says something about it. Sora mutters something about the 'damn carpet' and glances back towards the bodyguard.

Sora...shouldn't get him involved in this, probably.

(But _soulmate -_ _!_)

Exactly.

He can't _not_ try to get to know his soulmate.

So.

Sora's still a foot or so away from the bodyguard - the only indication that he'd noticed anything is the slight widening of his steel-grey eyes and a minute twitch (trembling?) of the hand holding the door open (which is - interesting, in a way that Sora can't quite describe) - so he slips one of his business cards from his pocket, palming it.

He winks at the bodyguard (he _really _should find out his name) and slides the card into the pocket of his suit jacket. It's unbuttoned, so Sora's movements are hidden from his boss behind him by the shifting fabric, and it's not like any of the others from the delegation have the guts to look backwards. Even if his boss _did_ notice, he probably wouldn't care.

(And, this way, Sora doesn't have to be the one to make the decision about whether or not he should contact his - soulmate, wow, that still feels a little unreal. He'll have to process that later.)

Sora leaves the building along with the rest of his small group, ushered out by FBI agents and amidst the general ruckus that comes with potential treason. According to Katsuki's soulmate, though, it was technically just grand larceny. Until Izuku had contacted Sora, of course - and how he'd managed to do that Sora had no idea because he was supposed to be _legally dead, _but whatever; it had been nice to hear from those brats - and he'd got foreign nationals and bribes and treason involved. Fun times.

(Somehow, he can still feel those gunmetal-grey eyes boring into him, and he shivers.)

Things are looking up for the first time in a while, Sora decides.

Also, for some reason he's really craving some KFC.

.

.

.

Izuku's standing on the edge of the roof of a building not too far from the one he'd been holed up in less than a week ago, on the night he'd first started working with Shouto, Eijirou, and Tsuyu. It's windy up there, and a little chilly, even with the midday sun beating down on his shoulders. It's perhaps just past two, and he has an appointment with someone.

Speaking of which.

There's a sound behind him - a shift of detruis, the scrape of metal against concrete, the clink of metal against metal - and the door opens.

Izuku turns slowly towards the sound. He's not particularly worried, if it is who he thinks he is.

He's right. It's a man dressed in a very high-quality suit, one of the arms flapping empty in the wind. His footsteps sound uneven on the rooftop, one of them heavier than the other, and his blonde hair is tied back to keep it out of his face. His eyes flash as they narrow against the sun behind Izuku. He cuts a pretty imposing figure, even though he's only maybe a couple inches taller than Izuku.

"Mr. Rockwell, I presume?" Izuku says, well aware that he himself is cutting a rather..._dramatic _figure, even though he's only wearing leggings and a plain sweatshirt, what with the sun shadowing his face and making it impossible to see his features. He's spent far too much time around Kacchan to have _not_ picked up a sense of theater. He kind of wishes he had a top hat or something. Just for a little extra _oomph_.

The man shakes his head jerkily. "Not quite. I'm Erik Edwards, CEO of Rockwell Prosthetics. My soulmate, Whitney - she's in charge of R&D and technically it's her company, but she's too busy tinkering and experimenting to actually deal with the day to day workings, so that's my job."

Izuku shrugs, although Edwards probably doesn't catch it, even with the way he's using his hand to try and shade against the sun. It's good enough for him. "You came alone, of course?"

Edwards nods. "Indeed. I couldn't risk otherwise," he admits.

"Thanks for your cooperation." Izuku takes one of his hands, gloved, of course, out of his sweatshirt pockets and uses it to point to the picnic basket sitting on the ledge beside him, because for some reason that was the only remotely suitable container Shouto had had in his safe house. "Inside this basket, you'll find all of the plans that Franklin Petersen stole from you - complete, of course - in addition to proof that they were on Bettencourt Healthcare's computer systems."

Edwards blinks rapidly. "I - what? Mr - "

"You can call me - Deku," Izuku says, choosing the first thing that comes to mind because while he has fifteen different plans for what happens if it starts raining, he didn't plan for this. Sometimes, he is an _idiot_.

Kacchan's going to be pretty mad at him, huh. Well, whatever - it's too late to worry about that now.

"Mr. Deku," Edwards says, a little relieved, like he's finally got steadier footing. "I don't understand what's going on here." He's blunt about it, which is pretty refreshing after spending a good portion of this week manipulating people.

Izuku shrugs exaggeratedly. "It's pretty simple, Mr. Edwards. I'm going to leave this basket here - " He points to the basket. " - and then you're going to pick it up, take it to your soulmate, and get your company's plans and evidence for a couple of lawsuits off the drive inside. Personally, I'd get rid of the hidden compartment in the port, though. You never know what someone might take it into their heads to..._smuggle._"

Edwards blinks rapidly. "Okay, but - _why? _Why are you giving me this? Why aren't you - I don't know, demanding money?"

Izuku spreads his arms wide, the wrist of his prosthetic one glinting in the sunlight. "Why does anyone do anything, Mr. Edwards?" he asks, then hops down from the ledge. Edwards seems frozen, eyes fixed on where Izuku had just been standing - or, perhaps, the basket containing what is most probably his soulmate's magnum opus.

"Besides," Izuku adds, just as he passes Edwards. "It wasn't necessary. This particular project had an..._alternate_ source of revenue." He chuckles to himself, just a little hysterically. He hasn't seen the numbers just yet, but he's guessing they're going to be _a lot higher _than he'd initially expected, since both Shouto and Eijirou are working in it_._

Izuku's gloved hand is on the door to the stairwell when Edwards calls after him, "We'll call off the investigation - the one looking for the initial thieves!"

Izuku pauses, just long enough to say, "Much obliged, Mr. Edwards," then he disappears into the building.

.

.

.

Frank Peterson is in his office, watching with copious amounts of despair as the FBI cart away everything in his office that isn't bolted down, and even a couple of things that are.

He's finished.

There is literally no way that he can come back from this, even if the FBI can't prove anything - and they _can't_, because there was never any bribe! - because the board of directors had been _right there_, and the shareholders, and the news crews…

He can't help but to glance back towards his office's television, where, as usual, the news is playing. And guess what's playing on every single news station.

The systematic disintegration of his life in the corporate world.

Frank watches, almost numb at this point, as in the background behind the reporter, FBI agents cart boxes of files, hard drives, computer monitors, and even office supplies into waiting vehicles. Presumably, they're going to be transferred somewhere and analyzed for treasonous material.

They won't find anything treasonous, of course, but since they've already taken his computer - monitor, hard drive, even the mouse - they'll definitely find instances of corporate espionage, sabotage, grand larceny, and proof of a great many other things that Frank _really_ wishes he'd deleted from his computer. If only he could go back in time…

He's jolted out of his daydream by his phone ringing, and he blinks a few times before he places the sound. Who on earth would be calling at a time like this?

It takes him three more rings before he can muster the willpower to actually pick up the phone. It's from an unknown number, so it's probably just a telemarketer or something. Anything would be a good distraction from this hell, though, so he answers it.

"Franklin Petersen," he says dully.

"You know, you really should have just paid us," comes a bright voice from the other end of the line, slightly accented. Frank immediately recognizes it, and his heart sinks to somewhere around his lower intestine because _shit._

Apparently Midoriya Izuku isn't dead. There goes that last thread of hope.

Well, at least that gets the charge down to _attempted_ murder. He's still most likely going to be put away in prison for the rest of his life, though, so it's not like it'll make all that much difference.

"Yeah, probably," Frank agrees morosely. "It wasn't my idea, though - it was my bodyguard's."

He can almost _hear_ Midoriya filing that away. "Interesting," he says noncommittally. He's probably going to have someone fact-check that later, and it's not like Frank can blame him. Really, who would trust the man who tried to kill him? Even if it wasn't his idea.

Which reminds him. "How on earth did you know? I found the transmitter."

More people file past on the screen, not that Frank's actually processing that anymore. He's too focused on his life crashing down around him. And maybe the voice on his phone - he's morbidly curious about how this all came to happen, after all.

"You found the transmitter with the blinking light, yes," agrees Midoriya. "That's the one we wanted you to find. You needed to figure some of it out, you see, and then we could just...give you what you were expecting."

Frank blinks, because, well, shit. He feels like a complete fool. "I can come back from this," he says, full of false bravado. He's not even convincing himself, much less Midoriya, so he doesn't know why he even bothers.

"Well, you might be able to," Midoriya agrees, mildly. "Except, you're forgetting about the bribe."

"There isn't a bribe," Frank says, a little desperately "There _is no _bribe."

There's a sound of surprise, triumphant, from the FBI agents behind Frank, over by his desk. Frank cringes because, well, he can guess what's about to happen. His English teachers had always said he'd been great at picking up context clues.

Frank glances over his shoulder and, lo and behold, the FBI agents are holding a bag full of money that he's never seen before.

"There was, though," Midoriya says, managing to sound convincingly faintly apologetic. "I mean, that's obviously not the whole two million - we took some for expenses and things like that - but, yeah, that should be enough to put you in prison."

Frank groans, cradling his head in his free hand and wishing that Dabi had never shown up on his doorstep with this idea. It had _seemed_ like a good idea at the time…

"Hey, did you know?" Midoriya continues, politely pretending that Frank hadn't made a sound at all. "If you can tell that stock's going to fall and you sell short, you can make a lot of money. There's a reason people go to jail for orchestrating things like that, you know."

Frank sighs. He sees where this is going.

"We didn't even need you to be arrested - that's just the icing on the cake, really. All we needed was news crews filming the FBI flooding your place, like it's an anthill and the agents are the ants. Guess what that does?"

Frank sighs again. "It scares the investors, and they pull out, which makes the stock prices fall," he says mechanically.

"I haven't looked at the numbers yet, but _sh0Ut0_ says they're quite high, even for the jobs he usually takes," Midoriya says cheerfully. Then, there's a dramatic shift in his tone, and Frank can almost see Midoriya's friendly face grow sharper, a businessman's cold smile spreading across his features, as his voice hardens. "Mess with my people again, and we won't be so kind," he says, brightly but edged with diamond blades. Frank shivers and doesn't even bother trying to hide it.

"Oh, and I wouldn't bother mentioning anything about us to the FBI," Midoriya adds, almost absent-mindedly. "It's not like anyone will believe you." He hangs up the phone, leaving Frank listening to the dial tone.

Midoriya's right, of course. Who on earth would believe him?

"Who was that?" asks Agent Rook, faux-curiously, like he's making friendly conversation.

"A guy from the insurance company," Frank says bitterly, and he's not even really lying.

.

.

.

The rest of the team - because that's what they are now, Katsuki guesses, a fucking _team _\- is waiting for Deku at the restaurant they'd gone to on Ochako's recommendation after they'd thought they'd finished the job the first time around.

Katsuki hadn't been there at the time, fucking obviously. He'd never have been taken in by such a shitty sob story. Deku'd always had a soft spot for them, though, and apparently the guy had mentioned _fuckin' ALL MIGHT_, so he can maybe understand what's lead them to this point.

He's still unsure about the fucking food, though. Granted, Round Face _generally_ had semi-decent taste, judging by her choices for celebratory dinners after their agency finished a fucking case, but she _also_ had a tendency to go for the shitty cheaper places rather than anywhere worthwhile.

So he was withholding judgement until the food actually fucking came.

And, like, it'd be pretty nice if Deku could get his dumb ass over here, since _he_ was the one who'd called them all together in the first place.

Presumably, it's for the payout, assuming there is one. Katsuki's already decided that he'd be fine with this particular job being pro bono.

Besides. He found his fucking soulmate.

(Again.)

(Because apparently Deku wasn't _actually_ his soulmate.)

(Fuck, if he were still on speaking terms with his mother, he'd tear her a new one.)

So, that was a mindfuck, and he didn't quite know what to feel about it.

Fucking _feelings_.

Ugh.

Eijirou seemed pretty okay, on balance, though. Katsuki could... probably stand getting to know him? He'd give it - the whole _soulmate _thing - a fucking shot, anyway, because why the fuck not. They'd had a kind of awkward start, but...whatever. They were far more compatible than he and fucking _Deku_ had ever been, so the bar was very, very low. He can see them being - _friends_, although that's not really the right word...

Speak of the devil and he shall fucking appear, apparently, because Deku walks into the restaraunt a whole five seconds later. "It's done," he announces, then sits down next to Shouto and across from Katsuki.

Katsuki, displaying a remarkable amount of self-control, does _not_ immediately kick Deku in fucking the shins. He has no idea what it is about the damn nerd, but something just _begs _Katsuki to pick a fight with him.

And, well.

Who the fuck is he to refuse the universe?

Deku rolls his eyes like he knows exactly what Katsuki is thinking - which, honestly, he wouldn't put past the fucking nerd - then gives Shouto a small nod, prompting him to reach into his sweatshirt pockets and withdraw five envelopes. He distributes them quickly and efficiently, and then Deku motions for them to open them.

Katsuki tears open the envelope, _obviously_ not because fucking _Deku_ suggested it, expecting maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars or maybe a thank you card if there was no payout and getting - _holy motherfucking shitballs._

That is a _lot_ of fucking zeros.

From Deku's high-pitched _squeak_, Katsuki's pretty fucking sure that he wasn't expecting this much money either.

Shouto shrugs in response to their disbelieving looks and the implicit _how the fuck_. "Who knows. I have no idea how the stock market works. Eijirou's the one who told me what to buy and sell."

Eijirou shrugs sheepishly, arm brushing Katsuki's. The brief touch almost feels like it fucking _burns_, the same way that roadburn does, and Katsuki's never heard of anything like this happening between soulmates before so clearly his best option is to ignore the shit out of it. "The stock market is pretty much half luck - and I've always been pretty good at being lucky."

"Somebody should kiss this man so I don't have to," says Tsuyu, making a face at the idea because apparently she's pretty fucking gay. Who knew?

(He did, obviously, with his fucking _perfect_ gaydar.)

Katsuki feels a considering look flashes over his face for a split second as he takes stock of Eijirou's teeth - because how the fuck would he kiss with those sharp motherfuckers? - then he decides _why not_ and suddenly his lips are on Eijirou's.

(What? He's got to figure out if he fucking...likes kissing his soulmate, or whatever.)

(Answer? He's not sure. It's way better than kissing fucking _Deku_, that's for sure.)

It's a chaste kiss, just a light press of lips to lips, but Eijirou lets out a quiet gasp like it's - a _gift_, or some shit, and that's...nice.

Fuck. No. _What_.

Katsuki breaks the kiss, turning away nonchallantly, but he's pretty sure no one actually believes him because can already feel his fucking ears turning red.

Luckily, before anyone can make any kind of fucking _comment_ about that - and Shouto sure fucking looks like he's about to - the door to the restaurant slams open and in stalks a petite woman, maybe just barely five feet tall but no less intimidating for her lack of height.

She spots them immediately - they're pretty fucking obvious since they're the only ones in the place - and once she does, she starts rolling up her sleeves. _"Deku-kun."_

Deku gulps and shoots him a panicked look.

Katsuki just smirks at him, because fucking _duh_. Of course he'd told Round Face. They work in the same office - it's not like he can just take the day off without giving his fucking colleagues an excuse.

(And, not that he would ever fucking admit it out loud, she was...kind of the boss, nominally.)

As it turns out, your fucking soulmate getting his dumbass self blown up on the other side of the world? Earns him a couple weeks off.

Ochako had needed to finish up a couple cases before she'd been able to get a flight to the US, but after that - _of course_ she'd come. She's shitty Deku's fucking _friend_.

And, guess what? Deku hadn't bothered to tell her that he was actually - mostly - fine. Or that he'd been blown up in the first place.

Katsuki leans back in his chair, a shit-eating grin on his face, and watches the fireworks spark.

.

.

.

Tsuyu watches curiously as the woman who'd just stormed into the restaurant starts tearing into Izuku-chan. She's pretty, with her short brown hair and rosy cheeks, and Tsuyu can feel something inside her relax at the sight of her. She supposes she's been spending too much time in the company of men. Too much testosterone.

"Ochako, _please_," Izuku-chan mumbles, finally finding a place to interject, red-faced. "You're blocking the waitress."

She is indeed blocking the waitress, who seems to be struggling under the weight of her trays - and no wonder, since it seems that Eijirou-chan and Izuku-chan both eat about twice as much as Tsuyu was expecting them to. She supposes it has something to do with building muscle.

Ochako-chan flushes, pouting a little, but instead of flopping down onto a cushion in a huff, she smiles at the waitress. "I'm so sorry," she says, then effortlessly takes two of the precariously balanced full trays before the waitress's trembling arms can drop them.

(Tsuyu falls a little in love with her right there.)

"I was a waitress in high school," Ochako-chan says brightly at the waitress's startled glance. Tsuyu understands her reaction - those trays are two and a half feet long, easily, and a foot wide; it would be virtually impossible for anyone without significant practice to pick them up one-handedly from a counter, much less sliding her arm underneath the two trays and just..._lifting_ them, the way that Ochako-chan just did. She's...strong. And clearly has an excellent spatial reasoning and sense of gravity.

Tsuyu decides then and there that she is not letting this woman leave without getting her phone number - just for friendship, if she's straight. If not…

Well. Tsuyu wouldn't say no to taking her out to dinner, if she's receptive.

...Assuming she doesn't have anything against dating criminals, of course.

Ochako-chan displays remarkable intuition, matching the dishes to the person who ordered it and setting them down gracefully - despite the fact that she hadn't entered the restaurant until a good twenty minutes _after_ they'd ordered, and Tsuyu is pretty sure that she hadn't met anyone aside from Katsuki-chan and Izuku-chan before that.

Eijirou-chan looks a little freaked out, eyes darting from Ochako-chan to his food and back again, so Tsuyu figures she's probably right about that.

Ochako-chan hands the trays back to the waitress, her smile still in place, shining brightly. The waitress smiles back, flustered, then retreats back to the kitchen.

Tsuyu doesn't blame her. That smile is a force of nature.

"Deku-kun," Ochako-chan says sweetly, her smile twisting at the edges a little into something slightly sinister. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends?"

Izuku-chan blanches and leans away from her, almost falling onto Shouto-chan. He goes from bone white to tomato red in less than half a second, and Tsuyu watches this with interest. She hadn't been aware that humans could do that.

Izuku-chan shifts slightly, just barely moving out of Shouto-chan's personal space - to be polite, Tsuyu thinks, or possibly in the vain hope that less physical proximity might lessen the blood rushing to his cheeks. Shouto-chan doesn't seem to like that, the corner of his mouth twitching downward just slightly, but otherwise he doesn't give anything away. Weird. He usually shies away from physical contact.

"Uh - um, r-right," Izuku-chan stutters. It's pretty clear that he's intimidated by Ochako-chan. Tsuyu doesn't really understand that - Ochako-chan seems quite nice. Not scary at all. But, then again, looks can be deceiving, she supposes.

"W-well, you know Kacchan, of course - " Izuku-chan starts.

Ochako-chan's smile is starting to look pasted on, but she's nodding patiently. "Hello, Blasty."

"Round Face," Katsuki-chan acknowledges, putting down his drink.

"I was under the impression that you were on soulmate leave because Deku-kun is in the hospital."

"He's not my fuckin' soulmate, apparently," Katsuki-chan says blandly, blatantly ignoring every other part of the sentence and picking up his chopsticks.

That's news to Tsuyu. Although suddenly the lost expressions on Eijirou-chan's and Shouto-chan's faces when Katsuki-chan and Izuku-chan'd stormed off into the other room for their private meeting thing yesterday made a lot more sense.

Apparently it's news to Ochako-chan, too. "...I'm sorry, what?" she asks delicately.

Izuku-chan winces. "Yes, well. It turns out that our moms were wrong? About the whole soulmate thing? Um. Yeah."

Ochako-chan opens her mouth, then closes it slowly. "...what."

Izuku-chan decided not to expand on that at all, even though Tsuyu thinks that it would be quite interesting to hear. "That's Kirishima Eijirou, Kacchan's soulmate," he says, gesturing vaguely across the table at Eijirou-chan.

Eijirou-chan shoots her a friendly grin, which has the unfortunate side effect of making him look like a shark because of his sharpened teeth.

Ochako-chan, to her credit, doesn't seem fazed at all by this, smiling brightly back at him - though it's possible that Eijirou-chan's rather _unique _teeth just don't register as weird after the revelation that Izuku-chan and Katsuki-chan apparently aren't actually soulmates. Which is fair.

"And this is To - " Izuku-chan shoots a quick glance over to Shouto-chan, then revises his statement. " - Shouto, my soulmate."

Oh. Interesting.

Tsuyu knows that Shouto-chan doesn't like throwing his last name around - in fact, he prefers to pretend that it doesn't exist - so the fact that he's opened up enough that Izuku-chan both knows his family name _and_ knows enough about the situation to know that Shouto-chan vehemently dislikes using it…

It's heart-warming, she thinks. It's good that Shouto-chan has someone he can trust like that. She should tell Yaomomo-chan about this whole debacle - she's absolutely _positive_ that Shouto-chan won't be able to do it justice.

Ochako-chan appears to forget how to blink for a moment, but seems to note the slight tension in Shouto-chan's shoulders and politely doesn't comment about the whole name thing. Then her eyes bug out as she actually processes the information. "Wait, not _the - _"

Izuku-chan's face, which had previously been returning to its usual color, is suddenly bright red again. It's obvious to everyone at the table, even as he tries to hide it with his hands. _"Yes, shut up,"_ he mumbles.

Ochako-chan laughs, a bell-like sound, and Tsuyu's intrigued, but before she can ask what that means, Izuku-chan changes the subject by introducing her: "And that's - " he hesitates for a moment, seemingly wracking his brains, before giving up and just saying, "Tsuyu."

Tsuyu is immediately reminded that Izuku-chan doesn't actually know her last name, which is kind of strange to realize. It feels like they've known each other for longer than a week.

Well. Technically, they kind of have.

Izuku-chan's chased her before, tried to prevent her from stealing things from absurdly rich people with five houses in one city, tried to get things back from her once she'd stolen them. Tsuyu doesn't hold that against him, not really. He was doing his job, and technically the law was on his side.

(Laws can be pretty stupid somethimes.)

_Technically_, they've known each other for years, even met face-to-face a couple of times. She'd usually ended up giving him a mild hallucinogen whenever that happened, though. It had been mostly to invalidate his testimony and make him doubt what his own eyes were seeing, but there'd also been a not insignificant part of her that thought it had been kind of interesting to watch the dogged way that Izuku-chan had gone after her and whatever she'd stolen, even while muttering something under his breath about flying pink frogs.

Tsuyu probably shouldn't mention that to his face, though. Yaomomo-chan says bringing up poisoning people - or even giving them mild paralytics - is frowned upon in public. And Yaomomo-chan is a classy lady, so Tsuyu is going to take her word for it.

Tsuyu evaluates her feelings about Izuku-chan, about the team, and she can't believe that she's actually considering this, but. She knows all their names. It's only fair if she reciprocates.

Because, somehow, against all odds, she feels..._safe_, here.

It's a weird feeling, trusting people.

"Asui Tsuyu," Tsuyu croaks, and Shouto-chan very carefully does not react, even though he knows how much she likes her privacy. Eijirou-chan keeps his friendly smile on his face, expression not changing at all and yet somehow he manages to convey his shock. Even Katsuki-chan's eyes widen at her words.

Izuku-chan's mouth drops open, just the tiniest bit, and she's pretty sure that he knows she has family somewhere so he _knows_ what she's giving them when she gives them her name.

Izuku-chan could find her family now, if he really wanted to. He could interrogate them about her whereabouts, not that that would get him anywhere. He could place them under surveillance and wait for her to return home and then arrest her. He could blackmail her, try to get back the few paintings and artifacts and jewels that she just couldn't bear to part with.

But he won't do that.

Because Izuku-chan's an honest man.

"Please, call me Tsuyu," she adds to Ochako-chan, who seems a little lost in the sudden weight to the conversation.

"Then you can call me Ochako!" she says brightly, bringing her hands together under her chin so that her fingertips are touching. She smiles, again, even more dazzling than before, and Tsuyu finally lets herself glance up to see her eyes and -

_\- With a single smile_

_You light the stars around_

_Can you see them glow? -_

"Oh," Ochako-chan says, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth, eyes wide. "It's you?"

Tsuyu nods. She's a little surprised by how..._unsurprised_ she is by this development. She'd always imagined something a little more...dramatic, perhaps?

(It's entirely possible that the romcoms she watches with her siblings when she's home have influenced her expectations. Tsuyu realizes they're unrealistic, of course - they're _romcoms_ \- but somehow she finds she'd been expecting to be more...surprised, maybe? A shock, or a spark, something sudden, not a subtle, slowly growing realization that this woman is, in fact, her soulmate.)

(Tsuyu thinks she likes it better this way, though.)

.

.

.

So, yeah, Ochako and Tsuyu are soulmates, apparently. Izuku could _not _say that he'd been expecting that, but now that he actively thought about it? He could see it.

...Probably. There's still the whole 'opposite-sides-of-the-law' thing.

Like Eijirou and Kacchan.

...And him and Shouto.

Huh.

What were the odds?

Did everyone in the insurance investigating business - or, at least, the people who did field work - have a soulmate who was a criminal? That seemed unlikely, somehow.

...What did it say about him, Izuku wondered, that he isn't really as bothered as he should be by that.

Well, in any case. He seems to have been spared Ochako's wrath for now, which makes him breathe a silent sigh of relief. Ochako's wrath usually manifests itself as mildly humiliating pranks and photos for future blackmailing purposes, but the extent of the humiliation mostly depends on how grave the perceived slight had been. This whole situation? Enough for...anywhere from two months to a year, and he has no way of knowing unless she actually tells him.

Kacchan scoffs derisively from across the table. He'd probably been hoping for a show.

Izuku kicks him underneath the table.

Kacchan scowls, but Izuku feels justified. How else is Kacchan supposed to learn how not to be a dick, without positive punishment?

(It's not negative reinforcement. Izuku hates it when people get those terms mixed up.)

Ochako stares at Tsuyu from across the table, apparently struck wordless now that it's sunk in that she's found her soulmate. It's a normal reaction, really - Izuku's internal panicking meant that he's an outlier.

Since Izuku's a good friend (and also in the market for ways to mitigate any future retribution), he gives her a little nudge in the ribs with his elbow. The pressure jolts her out of her stupor and she blinks, surprised, before shooting him a brief, grateful glance.

Tsuyu hasn't moved an inch, still staring in Ochako's general direction, so Ochako circles the table and gestures awkwardly to the space next to her. "Can I sit here?" she asks breathlessly.

Tsuyu nods, dazedly, and Ochako sits down beside her.

The table is silent for a long moment, and Izuku takes the chance to eat some of his meal before it gets too cold to be enjoyable. Luckily for him, it's still warm.

"So, Tsuyu-chan," Ochako says, finally breaking the almost oppressive silence. "What do you do for a living?"

The table is abruptly quiet again, this silence far more tense than the previous one. Izuku catches Eijirou and Kacchan exchanging _Looks_.

No one knows what's going to happen next. Will Tsuyu lie? Tell the truth? Climb up the wall and into the rafters to ignore social interaction? Something completely unexpected?

(Does Tsuyu even know how to lie?)

It's like the room itself is holding its breath, waiting for the final crack that would break the dam.

"I climb things," Tsuyu says, and Izuku almost chokes on his water.

She's -

It's not a _lie_, exactly.

"Oh, that's fun," Ochako says, oblivious to the fact that Izuku might actually be dying a few seats over. "You mean, like teaching people rock climbing? I've always wanted to learn!"

"I do that on the weekends," Tsuyu replies blandly, which is - news to Izuku, actually. Huh. It seems that Tsuyu's not particularly keen on lying to her soulmate, but she probably won't confess to her actual job unless Ochako flat-out asks her if she's a thief.

"Oh! What do you do the rest of the time, then?"

Tsuyu glances around the table, making eye contact with Shouto, then Eijirou, then Kacchan, then finally with Izuku, who just sort of shrugs. He has no idea what to say.

Tsuyu looks like she wants to make a face at him, but refrains.

This does not evade Ochako's notice.

"Deku-kun," she says sweetly. "What the fuck is going on here?"

Izuku surveys the room. Technically, there's no one close enough to overhear him even if he _does_ say 'Yeah, so, you know the thieves that we've been chasing pretty much our entire careers? These are them,' no one would hear.

Kacchan rolls his eyes when Izuku looks towards him, silently asking his opinion.

Eijirou eyes Ochako sharply, taking her in, and then gives Izuku a small shrug and a lop-sided smile that means, _may as well._

Shouto fiddles with his phone for a second, and then the subtle sound of a white noise machine reaches Izuku's ears. He takes that as tacit approval.

He takes a deep breath, then says finally, "If I tell you, you won't have plausible deniability."

Ochako's eyes widen, and it looks like she kind of...forgets how to breathe for a second.

Honestly? Izuku doesn't blame her.

Ochako's eyes dart towards him again, then to the person sitting next to him - Shouto. She eyes his hands, messing with his phone under the table, and then his hood where Izuku suspects the faint light of a Bluetooth headset is blinking through it.

"Shouto," she says under her breath, then, still quietly - "_sh0Ut0?!"_

Ochako turns to Eijirou, eyeing his hair - still black from whatever Kacchan had done to it to make it very much not red in less than ten minutes - the little scar bisecting his eyebrow, and then, when he shoots her another friendly smile, his incredibly distinctive serrated teeth.

"Kirishima," she states, before turning back to Tsuyu. "Then you're - _Tsuyu_ Tsuyu?"

Tsuyu deliberately looks into Ochako's eyes, and Izuku knows that they can hear _their_ song, whatever it is. "Does that matter?" she asks quietly.

Ochako contemplates that for a long moment. "Well, at least you've never killed anyone," she says finally.

(Eijirou flinches noticeably, and his eyes dart involuntarily over to Kacchan, but he makes an admirable attempt to transform it into a shoulder roll. Izuku watches Kacchan's eyes flick over to him, but neither of them say anything to draw attention to him.)

(Kacchan rolls his eyes at Izuku's pointed look and shifts in his chair, bringing his arms from where they've been crossed behind his head down towards the table, purposely brushing the inside of his forearm down the length of Eijirou's arm as he goes.)

(Eijirou shivers almost imperceptibly, then looks at Kacchan the same way that Tenya looks at orange juice.)

_(Wow._)

Izuku smiles to himself, then turns in his seat to share the moment with Shouto and -

_\- I write my fears on green notes -_

Shouto's eyes widen and he averts his eyes - and, actually, this time Izuku _knows_ why, instead of just guessing, for once.

"The cranes?" he asks quietly, moving closer to Shouto, just near enough for their sides to brush against each other.

Shouto nods slowly. "Yes, it's something - " His voice breaks, just slightly, so he clears his throat before he continues. "It's something Touya-nii taught me, before he - disappeared. Write your fears on paper and fold it into a crane. Then, you put it into a bottle and throw it into the sea. I started writing things in code after I escaped _him_, obviously, because I didn't want them to give away my position, and the bottles have holes in them so that they sink, but..." He trails off.

"My mom taught me something similar," Izuku says when it's clear that Shouto's starting to drown in his own thoughts, and not in a good way.

Shouto blinks slowly, processing, then raises his head. "She did?"

"Yes, although it wasn't quite the same. For one, we didn't really use codes…"

"Yes, I expect that my family is the only one who does that," Shouto says dryly.

Izuku shrugs, because there's not really much he can say to that. "...and instead of putting them in bottles, we attached the cranes to string and hung them up around the house like garlands. We always ended up using green paper, since it matched our hair color, and after my dad left we liked to emphasize the links between us as much as we could. It didn't hurt that green paper was always the cheapest…" Izuku shakes his head, clearing his cluttered mind. "Our apartment - we had to downsize from our house after we became a single-income household - we always had paper cranes hanging from the ceiling, the counters, the bookcases, and we almost ran out of room since my mom and I are serial worriers…"

Shouto's eyes are fixed on him, and Izuku can feel their weight encompassing him. It's nice - like a weighted blanket - and Izuku kind of wants to snuggle into the feeling, wrap it around himself, and never leave -

Something clicks for Izuku.

He's been pushing it out of his mind for a while now - ever since he'd discovered _Shouto_ was his soulmate, not Kacchan - trying to focus on the job, but Izuku can't escape the fact that his soulmate's pretty staunchly a thief.

And Izuku's dreamt of upholding the law since he was three, when he wanted to be a superhero. Five, when he wanted to be a policeman. Six, when he thought firefighters were better. Seven, when he lost his arm hauling a nursery schooler to safety when the school was hit by an earthquake and the only thing getting him through physical therapy was his desire to help people. Eight, when All Might was rising through the ranks like he was flying and Izuku wanted to follow in his footsteps. Fifteen, when All Might retired from the ranks and spent his time doing community service and outreach and Izuku still wanted to join him. Eighteen, when All Might told Kacchan as his ward that he was going into the insurance business and Kacchan told Izuku and they decided together that they would follow in his footsteps.

(Twenty-two, when the insurance company they all worked for as good as killed All Might.)

Izuku's been helping people, upholding the law, for as long as he can remember, and Shouto's been breaking it for just as long.

The seem pretty incompatible in that respect, don't they?

That's what's been niggling at the corners of Izuku's mind pretty much constantly for the past - wow, has it really only been a day? Somehow, it feels like it's been longer. Much, much longer.

He'd ignored it, of course, as much as he could - he had to focus on the job, especially when one slip could mean that they all ended up arrested or dead or _worse,_ but now that it's over, Izuku actually needs to think this through.

The main question: Does he want to pursue a relationship - _any_ relationship - with his soulmate?

Absolutely, unhesitatingly, Izuku's answer is _yes._

The next question: Does he want to test out a _soulmate-level_ relationship with Shouto?

This question takes a little longer to answer, but eventually Izuku comes to the conclusion that, yes, he really _would_ like to have that kind of intimate relationship with his soulmate, be it platonic or romantic.

Which would mean that they would need to spend more time together, getting to know each other.

And Izuku _really_ isn't complaining about that, but that _also_ means that they're going to have to figure out a way to bridge the gap between criminal and investigator.

Obviously, he'd love to get Shouto on the right side of the law, but when you've stolen as much as Shouto has, it's pretty much impossible to pretend that it never happened unless you break _more _laws and create a false identity. And, not to mention, Shouto has a very good reason to keep himself as anonymous as he can...

So, it looks like Izuku's going to need to be the one taking steps - and he sort of has, already, hasn't he? By taking this job, by going through with it, he's stepped forward.

But, well…

Still.

Izuku grins, taking in the lively scene before him. Ochako's just stolen some of Kacchan's meal and is eating it smugly. Kacchan has _finally_ well and truly exploded - it's been building for a while, and honestly Izuku's pretty impressed that he's managed to keep a lid on it for the past few days, but he'd also been getting a little worried because it _can't_ be healthy to keep all that rage bottled up for so long. He's jumped to his feet, bellowing inarticulately, and the only thing keeping him from launching himself at her is Eijirou's arm, solid as rock, around his waist holding him in place. Eijirou's laughing, and Tsuyu uses Kacchan's distraction to pilfer a few more vegetables from his bowl.

Izuku blinks, the beginnings of an idea coming together in his head.

Maybe…

Maybe, instead of upholding the law, he can try...picking up where the law leaves off?

"How do you feel about becoming Robin Hood, Shouto?" he asks Shouto, still watching the scene with amusement.

Shouto's lips curve into a slight smile, eyes brightening as he figures out where Izuku's going with this. "It's really not all that different from what I'm doing now."

Izuku concedes his point. Shouto, Tsuyu, and Eijirou really only steal from people who can afford it - or banks or museums with lucrative insurance policies. The amount of money they can make from a single heist is _insane_ \- Izuku is pretty sure that Tsuyu sends most of her money back to her parents, and obviously Shouto's kept some to buy houses and equipment, but what happens to the rest of it?

(Izuku has a sneaking suspicion that if he takes a closer look at some of the charities nearby the heist sites, he'll find that a suspicious spike in substantial anonymous donations will correlate with each heist. They might be more scattered in Shouto's case, since he mainly deals in virtual heists, but, nevertheless…)

He grins, moving his hand under the table to brush his fingers against Shouto's, letting the sounds of his friends arguing and laughing wash over him. Shouto starts, just slightly, almost imperceptibly, at the touch, but weaves their fingers together before Izuku can back off.

Izuku glances over at him, and he watches as a faint blush rises to Shouto's cheeks.

Vigilantism, huh?

Sounds like it could be fun.

.

.

.

.

.

**Notes:**

this chapter is a whole ass 30k words what the actual fuck

welcome to my first completed chapter fic on ao3

how did this only take me three months

also i kind of left this open-ended because i like this universe and i might write more in it? let me know if that's something y'all might be interested in

soulmate songs:

tododeku: Passenger (Noah Kahan)

kiribaku: I'm Yours (Alessia Cara)

tsuchakko: Let the Rain Fall Down (YOHIO)

hot wings: Catch Fire (5SOS)

momojirou: You're the One (YOHIO)


End file.
